Blizzard Authenticator

I am sure this has been posted all over the blogosphere by now but since I haven't been able to do my regular rounds to see what people are posting about I present you with some generic Blizzard type news directly from the mouth of big blue:

Blizzard Authenticator

And there we have it: The blizzard Authenticator. Essentially a means to add a little weight to your keychain by giving you a little device that can spout out unique numbers used to authenticate your wow credentials.

Basically your wow account gets tied to the authenticator which generates a random number sequence every so often. This number sequence is also kept on a blizzard server. When you log in you type in your username and password and then provide the number on the Authenticator and voila... you can play wow.

The advantage is obviously that if your account gets hacked somehow the hacker will not have the code on the authenticator and as a result not be able to rob you and your guild half blind.

The authenticator will be available from the blizzard stores but I wouldn't be surprised if they start shipping it out with the next expansion or some form of battle chest in the future.

If you don't have a tendency to lose keys and generally don't spell doom for various USB devices and if you like the thought of a little extra securit then perhaps the authenticator is for you.

You can take it with you anywhere you want so there's no real restriction in using it other than that it might be a problem for people who share accounts regularly.

Overall this is a very sound approach to providing a little extra security for their customers and I am sure it will prove to be very succesful provided there are no hidden bugs.

The little buggar will cost 6.50$ and since euro / dollar conversion charts only apply to 'normal' people I am fairly certain it'll be 6.50 euros for europeans once it's made available.

I myself will most likely get one once they've been out for a while (avoiding the wave of potential start-up problems) since 6.50 isn't a large premium to safeguard a wow account that is worth at least 100 times that much (in purely sentimental value of course...).

Make of it what you will, I for one am very happy with blizzard taking security of their customer's account serious (that or they're just trying to cut customer support cost).