Many times they have a wireless router with no security deployed at all.

And the simple fact is that the malware/spyware doesnt need anything to download itself to the end users machine

just my 2 cents

Also, the major reason why WoW has been affected so badly by this is the new player whose totally knew to the whole online game situation and so they are understandably naieve. They do not necessarily know the best places to get their info/mods and can be quickly duped in to scams. Power levelling is something that is being addressed by Blizzard by enhancing the amount of EXP you get from quests and lowering the Level EXP requirements.

Though it does hurt the community tremendously. I’ve had to install a 3rd party anti-spam mod to stop myself from getting the constant barrage of spam whispers from people who have a questionable ability to speak the English language. Names as your passwords is a flawed concept but on the flip side many of these gold sites do not posess good use of the English language so I don’t think they are guessing what your password is. It’s the key loggers that are making them so fruitful.

Also as blizzard stipulated the power levelling services used by people make a very easy target for hackers.

There are so many elements as to why this is such a lucrative trade, like established wow players auctioning (eBaying) their high leveled/powerfully equipped characters for real money (I saw one guy around a year ago selling 5 high levelled characters for the sum of £2,500). Many modification sites are succumbing to the keylogger scam and even the big ones such as Cursegaming.com I’ve heard are suffering. Also the vast majority of IE users who inadvertedly let in keylogging software due to the flaws in IE. Many places are making software suites so you can search for mods via the suite (such as WoWace) hopefully this will reduce the amount of hacked accounts.

As for the gold spam? WoW is a victim of it’s own creation there. I remember when the main frustrations were the lag and server downtimes, now for many that would be preferred to the constant gold spam that you receive pretty much anywhere in Azeroth. Personally it doesn’t bother me because I have Spamsentry. This has saved me from the constant barrage of idiocy that is gold spam.

Power-leveling services are the ones where you must give out account details (because they have to actually log onto your account and play).

You can’t get these confused. Gold buyers never have to give out personal details.

if you name is kasder de whellz and you decide to use that as your password, it probably isn’t as easily as guessable as say “john smith” or something of the like.

Then again, if your name is John Smith, who’s going to guess you used one of the most common names in the world?

But anyways, be smart with your private data.

Using your pet’s name or your middle name as a password is begging to get hacked. Using dictionary words as a password is begging to get hacked. In a WoW account, the most important piece of information your have is your account name and password. Don’t use your name, don’t use something simple.

The best thing to do is to use a random string of letters and numbers. You can also include certain special characters, although Blizzard limits the characters that are available for usage in a password. WoW passwords are also NOT case-specific, so capital letters are not necessary.

To wit:

‘hclw1u45e’ is a good password, ’shawnsines’ is not.