The Core Hound Pup is a new non-combat pet from Blizzard that you obtain when you attach an Authenticator to your WoW account.  If you detach the Authenticator for any reason, you will lose the Core Hound Pup.

Honestly, this is a cool little pet.  One of my favorites so far.  I plan to have an authenticator at all times, so I have no fears of losing this little guy.

That said, I want to use this as a reminder to tell everyone how important an authenticator is to your account.  Most keylogging programs or viruses are directed at online games, especially World of Warcraft.  Not only can they steal your gold, wreck your characters by deleting them, and plunder guild banks, but they can access and steal personal information from your WoW account as well.

I am the guild bank manager for our guild, cleverly dubbed “Khortermaster” by one of my guildies.  It is absolutely imperitive that I have an authenticator attached to my account, because of the higher access to our guild bank I possess.  If a keylogger were to get into my account, they could steal just about everything in our guild bank.  We do have a set gold daily limit in place, so that would remain safe, but I do have a fairly large number of stack access so I am free to move stuff around.

Recently, we had 2 guildies that were hacked, and gear was sold, money stolen, and the guild bank was looted by keyloggers.  Since each guildie has a max withdrawal limit of 5 stacks for 3 of our 4 tabs, they were logging onto every alt within the guild taking out 5 stacks at a time.  Flasks, potions, crafting plans, gear, high end crafting mats…all gone.  One of them even had his main toon deleted.

Luckily, Blizzard pretty much reinstated everything, so we were not at a complete loss.  However, this just goes to show how important having an authenticator is.  Imagine logging on one day to find all your toons stripped of gear, and all your gold gone…that’s IF your toons weren’t deleted.  P I S S E D  O F F !

Save yourself the trouble, cough up a whopping $6.50, and buy an authenticator.  It is defintely worth the money to protect your account, and it should be good for the next couple years.  Blizzard doesn’t even charge a shipping fee, because account security is a top priority for them.

The authenticator generates a one-time, single use 6-digit number you will be prompted to enter after you have entered your sign-on and password.  This number generation is unique to your individual authenticator, so even if a keylogger stole your WoW password, they couldn’t get past the authenticator prompting.  No matter where you log on from, the prompt will always be there since it is attached to your individual WoW account.

If you’re a kid or teen whose parents pay for WoW, simply give them the facts on why they should help you get an authenticator.

• Most keylogging programs target games, specifically WoW.
• They have access to personal information (not a Credit Card # luckily), but name, address, and so on.
• They can ruin months, if not years of gameplay.

I’d personally stick to the protecting information part, since some parents won’t understand the hard work and time put into the game.

So, get your authenticator…get your Core Hound Pup…and set those keylogger fears aside!