Back in 2001-2002 or so when I was around 14 and towards the end of playing EQ seriously. I went through all the server forums and searched for people who posted their yahoo email. Then I would compile a list of those emails and use a cracker to gain access to their yahoo accounts. I would figure out their birthday through other accounts linked to their email and use for the forgot password option on the station website. Thus accessing their Everquest accounts. Although many used the same password and similar usernames for EQ.
All of the accounts I gained access to were lvl 60's. Many of them had fungi's and top items etc. Some of the accounts I did nothing with. A few I think I stripped sold stuff and then traded for items/pp or accounts on other servers to leave no trail of myself on that specific server.
One interesting experience happened because of this. A woman messaged me when I was on her main character. She was part of one of the top guilds on the server. She actually genuinely thanked me for gaining access to her account. She said that she had been addicted to EQ for a long time and by having her account taken away. Made her step back and look at her life and decided to make changes. I never did anything with her character and I think eventually she got it back because I lost interest or I may have given it back. Hard to remember everything.
Web security was not great back then. Basically I would leave the website open to the page where you can change your password for the account. Then I would open EQ login and see if customer service changed the password and many times they did even when I was on the character. All I would do is change it again via their website that I already had open. The lady remarked to me that customer service didn't understand how I kept changing it over and over. Which I was surprised that method even worked at all considering how simple it was.
I'm pretty sure everyone was reimbursed eventually since I only did this for a short time period and I didn't try to keep up with all the accounts I had access to. As well as losing interest in playing EQ.
I would never do that today and I understand how much time people put into their characters. I never did anything like that after those incidents either. Most of the time I give away stuff now to compensate.
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