Getting your account hacked is a real danger for any World of Tanks player. Account theft can not only happen through direct account hack but also via email accounts linked to your World of Tanks account. Following certain precautions in order to improve your email security will decrease the possibility of an account hack significantly. We would like to suggest several simple steps which will help you improve the security of your email account.
1. Keep your email account confidential.
Your email is your property. Under no circumstances should you give anyone else access to it, including your friends or relatives as you cannot be sure that they will take care of its security properly.
We strongly recommend using a new and different email address to register your Wargaming accounts. Using an already existing email address that is used to register other websites or games will increase security risks as it is more difficult to protect the account against hacker activities from several sources.
2. Be wary of suspicious emails.
Do not open attachments and do not follow links contained in emails from unknown senders. Check emails sent by friends or relatives for viruses if possible, as their email accounts could have been hacked and used by hackers. These cases are not uncommon so it’s better to be on the safe side.
Please note that hackers can send you emails claiming to be representatives from an email, website or gaming service you are registered to. They will write elaborate stories in order to find out your personal information. For example, in these emails they would inform you that your email is under investigation for spamming and would request your email account password in order to “ensure that you are not a spam bot” otherwise they “would block your email account”. Do not trust emails like these ever! The administration of any website or service will never ask for your password. Only hackers would request that.
3. Take care when installing new programs on your computer.
Use the developers’ official sources when downloading software of any kind. Programs shared on torrents and offsites often carry malware meant for personal data thievery, including password stealing. Check any downloaded software with an antivirus program before installing it.
Use license antivirus software only. Cracked antivirus programs can be damaged, infected or outdated. Currently, there are many free license antivirus and antispyware programs which provide a high level of security for your computer. Scan your computer for viruses regularly to avoid any possible damage.
Switch off the autorun feature available for removable storage devices. Many viruses and spyware come with an Autorun.inf file which commands the launch of a certain program whenever the removable storage is detected by your operating system. You can easily find instructions on how to disable the autorun feature on the Internet by searching “disable autorun” in a search engine. The steps may require some degree of computer literacy, however when in doubt ask a friend to help you. Disabling the autorun feature is worth the effort.
4. Create a strong password.
Your email password must be as complex as possible. The optimal password should consist of more than 8 characters containing numbers and both lower and uppercase letters. Ideally, the password should not contain a single word but consist of random letters; such passwords are hard to remember but even harder to hack.
The best way to keep your password safe is by remembering it. If you do write it down somewhere, never keep it in a public place. A good example of bad password storage is a post-it stuck to your monitor.
Use password generation and storage programs. They create secure passwords and keep them encrypted, protecting them against any hack attempts. If you do have a program like this, please install it on a flash drive and use it on any computer used to access your email.
When working with email, please avoid any “remember my password” or “automatic connection” features on the website if you are not certain that no one else has access to that computer. Otherwise, a stranger might gain access to your email account.
Use a unique password for your email account and do not use it for other accounts or websites.
5. Use a secure secret question.
Sometimes standard secret questions used on most email services are not trustworthy enough. Hackers can easily find answers to them by looking through your social network profiles. Therefore, we recommend you avoid selecting questions such as the nickname of your dog, the colour of your mother’s eyes, the name of vacation resorts, etc.
Your answer to your secret question should be private and impossible to find via search engines. Do not pick a historical date, a famous person’s name or otherwise for a secret question as answers to them could be found in a couple of minutes.
Do not use very simple answers such as “Yes”, “No” or “1985” as they are too easy to guess. Similarly, do not create phrases which are too complex containing multiple words, symbols or punctuation marks because you might forget.
Do not create an answer with information that can be found through your friends or relatives. You must be the only person who knows the answer.
6. Link your email account to your mobile phone.
Many email providers offer the security service of linking your mobile phone to your email account which is used any time you want to recover your password or login. This service increases the security of the account significantly. You can find the instructions on how to apply this service (if available) in your email account options.
7. Set passwords to email folders if applicable.
Set passwords to your email folders for added protection in case your account is hacked. By doing this, hackers will not gain access to your email even if they break into your account. Therefore, even if the hackers try to use the “retrieve password” function for your World of Tanks account, they still wouldn’t be able to read the email sent to you with the new password.
8. Take care when allowing access to your files within a network.
The ability of sharing files over a local network is convenient but not always secure. We strongly recommend that you put files intended for sharing into one specific folder and give only that folder sharing rights, whereas access to all other PC folders should be blocked. Do not give public access to a system drive of your PC: it can lead to the loss of important files or data theft. Files such as chat logs, cookies, text files containing passwords, etc.
Adjust programs which have access to PC data wisely. This would include the program’s network permissions and computer access permissions.
9. Enable Second Authentication Factor (2FA) on your account.
Enabling 2FA adds an additional layer of security to your account. Once you've enabled it, you will be able to authenticate your identity via an Authentication application on your mobile device (available for both Android and iOS devices). Find out how to enable it here.