Our Guild name was either hacked or changed w/o notification

Flangdoodle

Logged in this morning to find that the guild I GM had its name changed without notice from "Baal Washerz" to "Buqaguran". Guild Tabbards and all. No notice from ZOS in any medium as to the reason for the change, so I can only assume we were hacked. On our guild activities page there was a line that "unknown" had edited our "About us" page. I sent in a trouble ticket, but it's not like there's any category this fits into, so I got a message saying "you will not receive a direct response".

I think however that this requires a direct response, so what can I do here? Who do I talk to? If we needed to change the name of the guild, I'd assume someone would tell us so that we could change it ourselves and not just change it without telling us? I did t even know what "Buqaguran" meant until I entered it into Google Translate. Apparently it's from the Central African "Lingua Franca" called Hausa, and means "Pressure"?

Anyway, HELP! What do I do? @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Bill @ZOS_Icy ?

Amottica

First, if your account is as hacked then I suggest changing your password for ESO and for the email associated with ESO. When doing so make sure the two have different passwords or it’s just makes it easier for them to hack your account again.

I expect only the GM can change the guild name which is why I say you need to change your passwords if you think this was a Jack job.

Guild tabard reflect the guild name so only one thing was changed.

It suggest including your ticket number in this threads so @ZOS_Bill or one of the other great community management people can help you out with this.

Good luck.

Flangdoodle

Amottica wrote: »

First, if your account is as hacked then I suggest changing your password for ESO and for the email associated with ESO. When doing so make sure the two have different passwords or it’s just makes it easier for them to hack your account again.

I expect only the GM can change the guild name which is why I say you need to change your passwords if you think this was a Jack job.

Guild tabard reflect the guild name so only one thing was changed.

It suggest including your ticket number in this threads so @ZOS_Bill or one of the other great community management people can help you out with this.

Good luck.

Thanks, but if a GM can change a guild name - shouldnt I just be able to change it back? From what I understand, only ZOS can change a guild name - unless we/they were hacked.

Flangdoodle

Another thing I just noticed: when equipped, my guild tabbard shows the new (hacked) name - but when I unequip it and view it in my inventory, it still shows the original name. This picture shows the same guild tabbard. The only difference is equipped or unequipped. More evidence that it was a hack IMO:

Amottica

Flangdoodle wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

First, if your account is as hacked then I suggest changing your password for ESO and for the email associated with ESO. When doing so make sure the two have different passwords or it’s just makes it easier for them to hack your account again.

I expect only the GM can change the guild name which is why I say you need to change your passwords if you think this was a Jack job.

Guild tabard reflect the guild name so only one thing was changed.

It suggest including your ticket number in this threads so @ZOS_Bill or one of the other great community management people can help you out with this.

Good luck.

Thanks, but if a GM can change a guild name - shouldnt I just be able to change it back? From what I understand, only ZOS can change a guild name - unless we/they were hacked.

No. You cannot change the name of the guild yourself and I am surprised you have not used the support tool to find out how to change the name of a guild.

So only Zenimax can do the name change but I expect only the guild leader can request the name change.

Also, the tabard is working just fine. It shows the current name of the guild when equiped and displayed.

Anyhow, all this is secondary to finding out how and why it happened in the first place.

Elsonso

Flangdoodle wrote: »

Another thing I just noticed: when equipped, my guild tabbard shows the new (hacked) name - but when I unequip it and view it in my inventory, it still shows the original name. This picture shows the same guild tabbard. The only difference is equipped or unequipped. More evidence that it was a hack IMO:

Normal. The tabard item does not change. If a guild changes names, everyone has to buy a new tabard. (If they want the inventory name to match the guild name)

Amottica wrote: »

So only Zenimax can do the name change but I expect only the guild leader can request the name change.

Correct. I have done a guild name change and to do it, I had to open a ticket and some CS person renamed the guild.

Since CS has to do the rename, then CS is the responsible party. Either they changed it due to a name complaint, and notification was not sent or received, or they made a mistake and either accepted a request from the wrong person or changed the name of the wrong guild.

Will be interesting to see how this plays out...

Flangdoodle

Elsonso wrote: »

Since CS has to do the rename, then CS is the responsible party. Either they changed it due to a name complaint, and notification was not sent or received, or they made a mistake and either accepted a request from the wrong person or changed the name of the wrong guild.

Will be interesting to see how this plays out...

This is an interesting possibility - I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that I was not the original GM? The original GM passed the title to me and then left the guild. Would they have sent notification to the original GM instead of me?

Elsonso

Flangdoodle wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Since CS has to do the rename, then CS is the responsible party. Either they changed it due to a name complaint, and notification was not sent or received, or they made a mistake and either accepted a request from the wrong person or changed the name of the wrong guild.

Will be interesting to see how this plays out...

This is an interesting possibility - I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that I was not the original GM? The original GM passed the title to me and then left the guild. Would they have sent notification to the original GM instead of me?

Could the original GM have resurfaced and made the request?

Flangdoodle

UPDATE:

so apparently they *did* send me a notification, but because Gmail considers every email from the same domain as part of the same conversation, it got buried several items down in the thread and I did not see it.

We have since submitted a new guild name which was accepted, and have changed accordingly. I respect and accept their decision (TBH- the original name which the former GM had was enough on the line to be a judgment call).

However I am still at a loss to figure out why the only *in-game* notice of the name change was "Unknown edited the 'about us' page" on our guild activities page. No in game mail. No "ZOS _[so and so], has edited" , etc. If I hadnt seen the email (and when I created this thread I hadn't), the only notice there was of the name change was that the name HAD changed to some random creepy name, and the above editing from "Unknown". What else could I conclude other than some sort of hack?

Every other official communication I've ever seen from ZOS has been from "ZOS_ [whomever]".

This has been resolved, but they really need to fix this. I suggest that any such name change in the future be accompanied by an *in game* communication or at least something indicating that this change was both intentional and FROM ZOS.

jaws343

Flangdoodle wrote: »

UPDATE:

so apparently they *did* send me a notification, but because Gmail considers every email from the same domain as part of the same conversation, it got buried several items down in the thread and I did not see it.

We have since submitted a new guild name which was accepted, and have changed accordingly. I respect and accept their decision (TBH- the original name which the former GM had was enough on the line to be a judgment call).

However I am still at a loss to figure out why the only *in-game* notice of the name change was "Unknown edited the 'about us' page" on our guild activities page. No in game mail. No "ZOS _[so and so], has edited" , etc. If I hadnt seen the email (and when I created this thread I hadn't), the only notice there was of the name change was that the name HAD changed to some random creepy name, and the above editing from "Unknown". What else could I conclude other than some sort of hack?

Every other official communication I've ever seen from ZOS has been from "ZOS_ [whomever]".

This has been resolved, but they really need to fix this. I suggest that any such name change in the future be accompanied by an *in game* communication or at least something indicating that this change was both intentional and FROM ZOS.

They probably keep the changed by anonymous to avoid potential harassment.

Elsonso

jaws343 wrote: »

Flangdoodle wrote: »

UPDATE:
However I am still at a loss to figure out why the only *in-game* notice of the name change was "Unknown edited the 'about us' page" on our guild activities page. No in game mail. No "ZOS _[so and so], has edited" , etc. If I hadnt seen the email (and when I created this thread I hadn't), the only notice there was of the name change was that the name HAD changed to some random creepy name, and the above editing from "Unknown". What else could I conclude other than some sort of hack?

Every other official communication I've ever seen from ZOS has been from "ZOS_ [whomever]".

This has been resolved, but they really need to fix this. I suggest that any such name change in the future be accompanied by an *in game* communication or at least something indicating that this change was both intentional and FROM ZOS.

They probably keep the changed by anonymous to avoid potential harassment.

My thinking is that it was edited by a tool outside of the game and that there was not an account to associate it with. They should definitely change that to something official sounding when that happens, though.

Anyway... glad it got resolved, Flang!

Flangdoodle

jaws343 wrote: »

They probably keep the changed by anonymous to avoid potential harassment.

Oh yeah, I get that, and it's probably a good idea. I'm not asking for the specific employee's name or email, but surely they can give **some** indication in game that a change or edit was official, like "@ ZOSAdmin " or something like that instead of just "Unknown" ?

Flangdoodle

Elsonso wrote: »

Anyway... glad it got resolved, Flang!

Thanks! *whew* yeah, me too! 😁

merpins

Lol. Your guild name was Baal Washers and you're confused as to why it got changed? I see that it was resolved, the email being lost in a sea of emails and wishing there could be an in-game notification on top of a normal email. Glad it got resolved, but I mean... The writing was on the wall, or rather, in the guild name.

Flangdoodle

merpins wrote: »

Lol. Your guild name was Baal Washers and you're confused as to why it got changed? I see that it was resolved, the email being lost in a sea of emails and wishing there could be an in-game notification on top of a normal email. Glad it got resolved, but I mean... The writing was on the wall, or rather, in the guild name.

I inherited the guild from someone else - and yeah, like I said, I totally understand their decision, so I wasn't confused as to why it got changed - my issue was with how they went about doing it.

ZOS_Bill

Thank you for the update. With this guild naming issue now resolved, we are going to close the discussion.