I am sorry that I haven't posted in a while, but lately I am having a real off moment in real life and FFXI isn't really helping me in any way to make me feel any better. /surpise /surprise

On top of that I unwillingly managed to upset someone in game who actually really means a lot to me.

"The PlayOnline Membership Information section can now be accessed from the web!  (12/18/2007)

Starting today, the PlayOnline "Membership Information" section under Service & Support on the PlayOnline Viewer can be accessed from the web.

PlayOnline "Membership Information" can be accessed here."

Sorry SE, but that's highly unappropriate of you. Instead of making an effort in retrieving people their stolen account, you're giving these hackers an extra way to get our login details.

I am sorry, but I am really scared of logging in at this point. I am running these spyware programs 3-4 times before I log in… My paranoia is just driving me over the edge ! I really have no fun in playing like this :'(

The last few days there has been an augmented number of reports of accounts being stolen on various servers. It's causing a lot of people to /panic and become more precautious. After a lot of casualties and accounts being stolen, an Advanced programmer on the Blue Garth forums found ut where the malware was coming from…

Following Information is taken from Maiev's weblog:

>Apparently it has been confirmed that there is some hidden iframe (0×0px) on FFXI ]]DO NOT USE SOMEPAGE[[ that contains malicious javascript. I only ask people with technical expertise to attempt to load the page at this time. The iframe loads a page from “miorsocft.com”, it should be easy to find. This script is being looked into by our dev team already and some volunteers. (I’ll post some screenshots later)

Screenshot

Despite the news above, we’ll still look into the ADs and have a full report on our website, because “account stealing capable” or not, we don’t want them installing annoying junk on your PCs

Source here (near the bottom).

So yea, to protect yourself, don’t visit somepage since its already compromised (And don’t be curious and check it out!). There’s also been speculation that the people who steal accounts are using a flaw in Real Player, so if you have it just uninstall it for now.

Last but not least, having a web server compromised is pretty bad. (Eg Somepage). I’ve also been getting random spam from Chinese IP addresses. So I’d like to remind those that own a website and forums that is related to FFXI to keep it secured ‘.’ At the very least, strong passwords for your server and update your software. As an administrator of web services, you hold a lot of information about people (especially if you run a forum), and having those compromised not only will leak personal information, but will allow an attacker to modify the website to something similar to somepage and hurt all those users.

In general, the attacker is using a flaw from both the server and client (Real Player) to make this happen. Therefore, please update your programs (like all of it), patch Windows (there’s a patch yesterday for both XP and Vista, do a manual Windows Update) and use a secure browser.<

Any idea how terrible this is? SE is actually proclaiming their accomplishments of defeating RMTs and because of the increased difficulties this has caused these gil sellers, they are looking for other ways to farm their gil. Implementing malicious scripts on community websites would seem an extreme action at first, but apparently that's the course they're heading for right now…

It even gets worse. At this point SE is nothing doing about the stolen accounts, they're not even recovering them. Basically they're asking for your NEW Visa details, which most likely has already been changed by the hacker by then. So they tell you they can't help you. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT? You pay 4 years with the same visa for your account, expansions, membership. Then suddenly your account gets compromised and some obscure visa details editing takes place without any reason and they don't intervene??? It's as Square Enix just doesn't care and bluntly invites/encourages people to steal others their account. it even makes the selling of accounts so easy…

If SE really wants to keep this outdated method of linking owners of accounts to their visa details, then at least let them ask people for their current visa card details before being able to change these details:

*Current Visa card number…
*New Visa card number…
*Retype new viacard number…

Anyway, reading following thread made me even more scared (links provided by Maiev)

I sincerely hope this never happens to me, I would be tremendously devastated :'(

I feel like ventilating (someone)

With the current two level 75 jobs I have, I usually don't have too
much trouble finding a party and since I really want some merits,
you will mostly find my partyflag up on the rare occasions that I am online lately.
I really don't mind abrupting a craftingsession and muling 2 dozen stacks of crafting materials, 
when I get a party invite and some inner voice tells me that the acceptance
of that invite will bring me some good fortune and decent XP  
Unfortunately that that i.v. must have abandoned me during my latest parties…

Here comes a description of my five last parties in chronological order: 

Party 1: The misplaced joke

Maybe I need to blame myself partially for what happened in this party.
Once the party was formed, I joked about still not having Utsusemi:ni
and I asked politely if that would pose any problem?
Everybody laughed, but the partyleader thought I was being serious and kicked me instantly.
One partymember apologized to me for "his brother" being such an ass to me,
whereafter this brother-leader sent me a tell with the question: "were you joking?"
I am very very sorry, but if you're a level 75 yourself and you invite a level 75 ninja,
who's wearing reasonably good gear and types a phrase (filled with smileys)
while claiming not to have utsusemi, would you take such a statement seriously? 
All I could reply at my kicker was: "no comment". I never returned to that party.

Party 2: I'll invite you someday

I recieved a tell with a party offer at {Mamool Traning Grounds},
so I rush there as fast as I could and about 5 minutes later I ask him to invite me.
He replies me that he's in Whitegate looking for a bard, but to stay put, as they will be there shortly.

After 40 minutes of radiosilence, I send him a tell to ask him if everything is ok and I get following spooky message:
"the message was not recieved because the reciepient is either offline or changing zones."
So I keep trying to send him that message for about 20 minutes,
after which I gave up and returned to Whitegate.

another 200 ISP lost

Party 3: Connection Heaven

In here I gathered pretty decent XP for a while until I started to get disconnected
without no reason all the time, one hour and 4 different POL errors, I just went to bed.

Party 4: Astral Candescence

So I get an invite and I am being told to get to Mamook Ja Training grounds (how original)
and as soon as I am trying to get myself a runic portal pass, the taru tells me he is not allowed to give me a pass,
until the astral candascence is back in place.
WHAT?
Great way to find out that we lost besieged for the first time and
that this is one of the nasty penalties that comes along with it.
After explaining this to the party leader, I am kindly being asked if I wouldn't mind to run to the XP-place.
Even while it takes 20 minutes to get there and the trip is very risky for one person (you have to go through Mamook)
I said yes, because after my last 3 parties experiences, I just longed for some party adventure.
I managed to get safely through mamook, but just when I am about to enter the training grounds,
the leader tells me that the whm jus left the party and that they were about to disband,
since there was no way to get another replacement anyway because of the non functioning of the runic portals.

Party 5: Astral Candescence Part Deux

Not much later I get an invite from someone in whitegate for a party
to go to the Caedarva Mire. I tried to explain the runic portal problem in Japanese,
but wether she understood my terrible Japanese or she was just being rude and refused to answer,
the actual invite never took place.

Can't wait to see what party number 6 will have in store for me