So I have Lord of the Rings Online with the Siege to Mirkwood Expansion, the 2009 Anniversary Program Reward and a Lifetime $199.00 subscription. The last time I seriously played the game was in December. I log in every now and then though to make sure everything is okay. When the round of hackings started hitting the Internet back in May I decided it was a good thing to log on and change my password to something more complex that is not hackable easily, I did this with all of my major accounts for games and stuff. Anyway, I didn't log on for a couple months (was more into Star Trek Online at the time, still am too) but decided to log on to play for a bit today, with the new expansion Rise of Isengard coming out in Sep. I decided to log in and work on finishing some content I hadn't finished...

...imagine my surprise when I log in and find out that my account is banned ! It says "banned until 2038." I can't even access the forums! I haven't done anything in-game to warrant this, I haven't even played much in six months. I also am pretty certain that my account was not hacked at all, because I used http://www.howsecureismypassword.net/ recommended by http://www.techsupportalert.com/, a very well-known and respected freeware site, to test the security of my password and it said that it would take "about 98 quintillion years" for a desktop PC to crack the password that I was using (I used a password generator to generate a complex password that nobody could possibly figure out).

The only possible reason I can think of for the banning is that when I changed my password back in May they might have thought that somebody hacked my account, but its weird that they would because they, themselves suggest for security reasons to change your password every now and then. Sort of like how the last couple times I did a withdrawal with my debit card, my bank called me to make sure it was me. While I can appreciate the security reasons for doing so, its still annoying to me because I know its me who made the withdrawal, and its a waste of time, and I know that my account has been hacked.

What's weird about this is that I never received an e-mail about the banning. I always check my spam before I empty the folder to make sure there's nothing important that got sent there too. Its possible though that I saw it in my spam folder and thought it another phising attempt (I get dozens of those for a WoW account I don't have) and just deleted it, or if it was sent to my inbox, again, thought it was a scam, logged in myself through the LotRO site to check it and deleted it.

What annoys me about this is that its Sunday and I can't call tech support (if I send in a ticket I KNOW it'll be forever until they get back to me) and have this resolved until Monday morning .

So have you contacted customer support?

Edit: Nevermind

Give them a call tomorrow and don't freak out. It's probably just a mistake and they'll fix it

If not then freak out

Sounds like your account was hacked and used for some kind of illicit activities.

Gold-sellers do it all the time to advertise their sites in WoW. I don't know how well LOTRO customer support deals with these problems, but it can take anywhere from a couple days to about a week with a WoW account.

Also, if you have a keylogger or something on your computer, they don't have to guess your password, so scan your computer for malware ASAP.

Another possibility is that you got phished. When you went to the sites in the e-mails that made it through your spam filter, did you click the link in the e-mail or did you go to the site directly through your bookmarks or type it in directly to the URL box? The former is a big no-no when it comes to e-mails like that.

it doesn't matter how secure your password is if you repeat it across multiple sites.

why would you rwite thigs mother[censored]in essay on the bethesda forums and not the star wars or lord of the rings or whatever forums

What made them come up with 2038? haha.

It's (or was) the furthest date that can be specified on Unix systems - 2³¹ (2,147,483,647) seconds since midnight on 1st January 1970, to be specific!

RE: Riverstyx and DEFRON

I don't, that's the thing, it's a unique password that I generated that I don't even know myself by memory (I have it written down somewhere when I need it). Like I said, it would take 98 quintillion years for a computer to hack it. That's why I did what I did, to make sure my game account was safe because I didn't want to risk something happening like what actually happened to me (which is ironic when you think about it) .

And RE: keylogger, I have SuperAntiSpyware and Microsoft Security Essentials, both kept up to date with MSE running in the background. I scan every file I download and usually run at least SuperAntiSpyware every couple of weeks. MSE has not warned me about anything, and I just ran SAS to be sure and all it found was the usual stuff you pick up on the Internet, nothing major.

RE: sites through e-mail. I'm not that stupid, I never log into accounts from links in e-mail. If I ever receive an e-mail about suspected activity in a game or something like that, I always go straight to the game's account site and log in through there, rather than clicking a link on an e-mail, just to be safe. I've invested too much time and money into the games I play to risk having anything bad going wrong with them.

RE: Nuck

Because I can't, I'm banned from the forums, and I was annoyed and needed somewhere to vent and figured you guys wouldn't mind an amusing story.

RE: BoSStealthAgent

Don't know, probably just a random number that they come up with to make sure that nobody would have access to the account (game probably won't even be around then, but you never know). Sort of like how my drivers license expires in 2049 (no joke!).

Right now I'm not panicking because I'm 99.99% certain that I haven't done anything ingame, and that nobody else has had access to my account to warrant a banning. I'm more amused and slightly annoyed than anything else.

My head hurt.

Just because your password is complex doesn't mean someone couldn't have gotten your account. If there was a keylogger, you repeated passwords, or some nasty malware on your computer, they would have your password and not have to guess it.

OMG 2038

THE NEXT Y2K

If your first antispyware program didn't pick anything up, I'd recommend trying Malwarebytes. That program is pretty good at picking up stuff that other anti-spyware programs miss. It can't hurt to run a virus scanner like AVG or Avast as well.

Also, one thing that I've seen recommended on the WoW forums: try running LOTRO with fake info typed into the login fields while you scan. Some malware masks itself until the specific program it's designed to steal info from starts running.

Hmm I don't know why they would do that, but yeah I wouldn't worry about it too much. Just talk to them today and you should be fine..svcks you had to wait though. Back when the game first released I played 24/7 pretty much for a week..racing to level cap like a nob. Anyways I ended up getting banned because they thought I was a farmer..they did it to quite a few people actually. I ended up getting my account back in a few days but I thought it was pretty funny they'd do that to me.

Just to report Browncoat, I was browsing the LOTRO forums and I've seen another topic about this. It looks like what happens on Guild Wars. Some how they can get your password from Turbine themselves (this is what happens in GW, NOT saying this is what happened but what might be cause) and log in with it if you do not play for a certain amount of time. Which is why I try to log in on a weekly basis even if I'm not playing. It's weird how it works..I don't even know if what I'm suggesting is right, but since it's happening to other people it means you have a good chance to get it rectified. Just to add more, in the thread they were saying that usually when the 2038 thing pops up, someone was logging into your account that wasn't supposed to be there. How they did it? Who knows. But it is not a virus or even on your end I don't think, it's company side.

SOMEONE CALL FOX NEWS

Contact customer support and bug the hell out of them.

Magic word to get past the b.s.: "Representative" or "I want to speak to a manager". Assuming they have a telephone number to contact.

If none of that works, then contact your credit card company and see if you can get your $200 "lifetime subscription" money yanked back.