Hello Everybody.

I feel that it is necessary for others to know what occurred to me in order to raise awareness of this type of account breach and to raise awareness regarding account security.

In the early hours of last Friday, my account was compromised when someone came directly to me and said that they needed a .minecraft folder to fix their minecraft client problems.
I, unaware of the significance of giving someone a .minecraft folder, was only trying to help by providing them with mine. In return my account was hacked a couple hours later. Looking back at it now, this was obviously an extremely careless decision on my part.

To my knowledge, the hacker, among other things, gave away over 40 owned items, many of them star tools. Then the people online at the time were all banned for needless reasons, some of which had never been banned before. However thankfully staff were quite quick to unban those that were wrongfully removed. I am also very grateful for the users who retrieved the owned items and then made the decision to return them to their rightful places; you all know who you are, and I thank you sincerely.

I deeply apologize to the people that were affected by this incident. It is my responsibility to keep my account secure, especially as a moderator of the server, to prevent such catastrophic incidents from occurring. Players shouldn't be worried about having their ECC experience hindered by others. Instead, as a staff member, I should be guaranteeing the well-being of other players and ensuring that they have a pleasant playing experience. For those of you who had never been banned before until that day, I know that I cannot change history, cannot change what has already happened. I can only say is that it is not the written record that matters, it's the true fact that you've never deserved a ban on our wonderful server that you should remember and be proud of.

I hope that you can forgive me for my mistakes, as I have undoubtedly learned from them. I have since made my accounts as secure as possibly can by changing all my passwords, integrating to a Mojang account and enabling 2-step authentication. Nevertheless, let us hope that this was an isolated incident and that it never happens again, to me or to anybody else.

I know there has already been a recent thread regarding the importance of account security, but I want to stress this out all to you, as someone who has had first-hand experience regarding just how deceptive people can be. I want you all to know that no matter how safe you think you are, you MUST take steps to ensure the security of your account. A great way on many services, including EcoCityCraft, to do this is to use 2-factor authentication. Please take a look at eek's thread regarding how to set it up - it's so simple to use, yet can prevent the unthinkable from happening. You can and should also set up 2-factor authentication on our forums by clicking your name on the top-right and then clicking 'Two-Step Verification'

It sounds like a broken record, but all of us are saying it for a reason. To be as safe as you can,

1. NEVER GIVE OUT YOUR .MINECRAFT FOLDER
2. USE TWO-STEP AUTHENTICATION IN GAME AND ON FORUMS

With my 3 year anniversary coming up in a week, I will be returning to the server in hopes of resuming my time on our great server.

Most sincerely,
3point14mp