i'm puzzled, barring any outrageous behavior, how exactly would some get caught?

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*someone

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Well if you don't trust your best friends with your wow account details, frankly you have crappy friends and bigger problems then WoW.

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Well, Blizzard has the ability to look up the country/state that your IP is registered to. This allows them to quickly see who is logging into what account. They have some very good programmers there, I wouldn't say it is difficult for them to develop something that records when and where an account is logged into from, and flags it for review. Actually, thats quite a simple thing to do.

Especially when I know people who let people who are in NZ / CA login to their account that is normally logged into only from the US.

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There is another exception, working in reverse. If you have a child who is a minor or you act as the guardian for one, you can let them play your account no worries. I believe Blizzard doesn't expect them to pay for the monthly subscription or expect you to shell out of an extra one. It's the way my 12 year old brother gets to play. (I'm technically one of his guardians) Not that I haven't come back to my account before to find a warning from Bliz for offensive behaviour.

Needless to say he didn't get to play for a good long while.

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I would guess that most of the time they find out when some dingbat is suspended for offensive behavior and their excuse is "but it was my friend!!!!!"

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As i recall, they caught the arena team members because getting to the next stage of the tournament required them to register themselves and their names didn't match those recorded on the accounts. To me, this seems as obviously foolish as taking a stolen (or even borrowed) credit card to a car dealership and trying to buy a car with it.

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Didn't Blizzard once have it in their terms of service that this wasn't an issue, if the people using the account lived under the same roof? And that you'd be able to transfer characters from that account to a new account owned by someone from in that household? Or was that all just hearsay?

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I believe they are getting better, but they nearly banned my account. Why? I travel, a LOT.

I use my laptop to play. Usually from whatever hotel I stay in. But a few months ago, I was on a big trip to China, Indonesia, Singapore, etc. About halfway through the trip, I could no longer get into my account.

Come to find out, I was banned. They fixed it, even gave me a month of free play, but still...

You'd think they'd use MAC addresses just to be certain.

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Mac addresses would solve most of the issues, except for the few of us who have more than one computer (myself included), but even then it'd be a clearer way to keep track of account sharing, as I am one of those people who travel 100% of my working time, I don't think I'd appreciate getting banned because of that..

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@10

MAC Addresses would not solve this issue. I copy macs around all the time to get around stupid sw that decides it wants to keep track of layer 2. Additionally my license allows me to log into my account from other computers. It is foolish to break that to impose arbitrary restrictions.

It is all about getting caught right now. If the person you share your account with is not trustworthy then you may have to face consequences when you get caught.

But if I share with my wife and she is trustworthy then ... no one will know.

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Logging MAC addresses is not a panacea, they can be spoofed just as easily as IPs can change. Unfortunately, the problem cannot be solved purely by technological means; unless, of course, they require that you install video surveillance in your house and they monitor you that way. I'm actually surprised that Blizzard hasn't started implementing this "security solution", as they already think its ok to monitor what you do on your computer in order to "protect" their product.

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@3 : well may be not your best friends. But how about the friends of your best friends ?? Then the friends of the friends of your best friends ?? etc.

How far goes your trust ?? tell me....

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Technically I could spoof video surveillance as well. This is an old problem, Blizzard is playing the little dutch boy with the dike. The dam will break.

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Funny, my brother and I both share an account. He has a 70 Resto Druid and I have a 70 Fury Warrior. We're both Ally, same server, and yes, the same guild. Makes raiding a little harder for us, doesn't it?

I also let friends that haven't played WoW on the account...but I log them in and they're at my house.

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however millions of ppl do it (me included) and blizzard wont go too far to ban over a million of their customers

This is the stupidest thing ever, and i almost lost all my respect to blizzard for this. This is something people will always do with teh music sharing age.

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And you could get caught as easily if someone wanted to dob you in. I have a friend in the top guild on my server and often when I message him to say hi I get a "sorry, this isn't ". If I was someone else, not a friend or I was a vindictive ex or a competitor from another guild I could easily dob him in and their entire guild would probably get banned since it's apparantly pretty rampant.

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Woops. that was supposed to say "sorry this isn't =player name=" but I used left and right arrows around it and they didn't show up int he post.

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I just got banned from WoW because of this.
Basically, I got up for a few minutes and someone at the gaming center place I was at went on and tried asking someone for there account info to trade.
I had no idea this happened and the person he whispered never replied back when I got back on.

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@19

Yeah, I bet.

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