How to protect your Battle.net account from hackers and scammers

[harlan4096]

A complete guide to security and privacy settings for your Battle.net account.

Losing your Battle.net account, and the years of gaming and grinding progress, could be a nightmare. There are better ways to quit WoW, Hearthstone, Overwatch, and other games that seem too addictive to walk away from, for sure. Assuming you’d rather keep gaming with your Blizzard account, safeguard it with our guide.

• Blizzard account security
  • How to change your Battle.net password
    
  • How to change the security question
    
  • How to set up two-factor authentication on Battle.net
    
  • How to ensure that only you have access to your account
    
  • Don’t leak your Battle.net password
    
• Privacy settings
  • How to hide your real name
    
  • How to protect your game data
    
• Battle.net client settings
  • How to hide your list of games
    
  • How to hide gaming profile information
    
  • How to turn off notifications
    
• Not only Battle.net
  

Blizzard account security

Scammers don’t care how hard you worked to reach level 60 in WoW or whether your name shows on the Hearthstone leaderboard; they’ll happily steal any account and then sell it, use it to trade in-game currency, or do other prohibited stuff. To protect your account against hacking, you need to tinker with the security settings. To view them, sign in to your account in your browser and go to the Security settings.

How to change your Battle.net password

The first order of business is the password. It must be unique — never use the same passphrase for more than one account. A good password is also long and not obvious. Forget about “pa$$word” or “batman2003” — you need something more complex.

To change your Battle.net password, go to Security and click Update in the Password section.

How to change the security question

Having a security question is a good way to protect your password from being reset. On the other hand, an attacker can easily turn the security question into a loophole: If they learn or guess the answer, they will gain access to your account — and it might not be all that difficult; users publish a lot of personal information in the public domain.

If the answer can be gleaned from, say, your social network profiles, make sure to change the question to something a bit trickier:

• Go to Secret question and click Update;
  
• Select an appropriate security question in the drop-down list;
  
• Enter the answer and click Save.
  

So as not to forget the top-secret answer, use an encrypted note in a password manager. As the name suggests, this tool can also store and generate strong and reliable passwords.
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