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[RiotInferno]

I have an authenticator, and I'm torn on it, really. I appreciate that there's another layer of security protecting my account. At the same time, though, I can't help but feel like the only reason it exists is because Blizzard doesn't trust their own basic security. To my knowledge, they're the only company that does this.

I've had authenticators for Rift and Star Wars. Google has it as well. They're exceedingly common for MMOs now; some banks have them as well. There's a reason it comes up, though, that's not related to Blizzard's security. Hacked databases with salted/hashed/plaintext passwords are showing up constantly. When you have an attacker with one of these lists, the most profitable things he can do is hit banks directly, or hit games and find things to sell.

Banking:
People tend to take their banking security more seriously (different, stronger password). They might not have online banking at all. You might not get the right bank. A login from a new computer causes a security question to appear.

Games:
Take out the first three restrictions for banking. Add in the difficulty that you have to strip a character and sell stuff instead of just taking money directly. Without an authenticator, there's no security check for new computers. With one, there is.

Banking will have bigger wins, but they'll be rarer and easier to track, and a hell of a lot more punishing legally. Same if they get something like Amazon. So games actually is more reward for them - and Blizzard's are the most common that have resellable parts.

Quark / Treesh, thanks for the extra info on where authenticators are being used, and how banks seem to be more secure! Security is something that I know just enough about that I don't really look into it very deeply.