Mobile Authenticator

I have talked before about my purchase of the Blizzard Authenticator key fob. I’ve had it since July ‘08 and have had no regrets at all with this purchase. It has never caused any problems and has never been considered a bother. It’s an extra 10 seconds to login and the added warm fuzzy feeling that my account is just that much harder to hack. After seeing guildmates being hacked left and right, I felt very much like a smart cookie for the little $7 purchase.

For those of you with fancy-schmancy phones like my iPhone, there is now an app available that does the exact same thing as my key fob. See the FAQs for more detailed information. The best part of all this is that this application is FREE. Yup, it doesn’t cost anything! And I thought $7 was a good deal!

You are required to convert your WoW account into a Battle.net account which really was super simple. Only difference? Now I login to WoW with my email address & password instead of my account username. You can add multiple accounts to your Battle.net profile as well so all your logins are now the same. I have an old deactivated WoW account that I was able to add to my profile as easily as the active account.

To use the application authenticator I had to first remove the key fob connection. They made it simple. I just had to enter two codes from the authenticator in a row and it was removed. I was then able to add the application authenticator using the serial number of the application, which comes up the first time you open the application or can be found anytime in the Setup menu.

What are the only differences I find between the key fob and app authenticators? The key fob had 6 digits. The application has 8. My husband was happy with the increased numbers but he’s a security nerd. I was neither excited nor dismayed by this news. Also you can now see when the number is about to change with a little progress bar under the code so you don’t have to worry about adding a code that will expire a second before you hit enter. That I do think is pretty handy.

I set up everything last night before going to bed. I didn’t want to start my night out whining if it broke something. It went smoothly with absolutely no problems. I actually already had a battle.net account (from when I purchased the key authenticators for my husband and myself) and to that I was able to add my two WoW accounts. I deactivated the key fob and activated the app. I then crossed my fingers and tried to login with the new code. It worked flawlessly.

A sort of neat side note for those who do have two WoW accounts is that before going to my character selection it asked me what account I wanted to login to. I thought it slightly odd since the one account isn’t active. I felt it pretty obvious which I would want to login to. This of course wouldn’t be an issue for those with multiple active accounts and allows you the use of one authenticator for all your accounts (not to mention only one username/password combo to remember).

My husband has his own iPhone and authenticator app as well has his own battle.net account so we won’t be running into any potential account sharing issues. Like if he goes out and I can’t play because he took his phone and the code with him. I guess that means my days of logging him in to take all his gold are over (just kidding!).

I could see it as a possible bonus parenting tool to prevent kids from logging into WoW without mom or dad there to give them the code. Either that or force kids to sneak their parents phones away when they’re not looking.

If you have an iPhone (or I assume an iPod Touch), I recommend this highly. It’s going to be more convenient for me in the long run because I always have my phone near by. I always kept my key fob with my computer but now I really don’t have to worry about the extra device.

You can download it through the iTunes app store. Click the link on this site for a quick way to find it.