Well, Congratulations. If you've been invited to join our little corner of
Gaia and are well on your way to domination of the fishing world, you'll
need a few tips to help you on your way. This is an edited version of a page
i created for another site, but.. i found some of it applies to Gaia.
Secure Your Password
One of the thing we hear most often is "I have been hacked".
From what I've seen, there are several ways to do this on Gaia.
First, (and most likely) you have been scammed. This means that someone with
an official looking I.D. has sent you a very colorful looking page with
graphics and pictures, saying that you have been reported or are suspected of
hacking on Gaia. All you need to do is send your I.D., password, and birthdate
and everything will be corrected.
If you've bothered to read half of the warnings when you registered or the ones
on your P.M. page you'll see that NO ONE from the Gaia staff will EVER ask you
for your username or password.
Gaia is built using a little more sophisticated form of the PHPBB
(Parallel History Project Bulliten Board) protocol.
That is all very interesting right? Well.. the point is this, Gaia passwords
are encrypted with a one way hash so they cannot be accessed by even the Gaia
staff. Only reset. The Gaia staff have no need for your password as they could not varify it anyway.
Secure Your Browser
The second largest problem is"I didn't give out my password, but i still got hacked".
Unfortunately, YES that does happen. Some links that you click on in Gaia use what is known as a "*** injection attack". (I won't go to deep into this as i don't want to encourge it). It's enough to know that this does happen. It's not easy, as to do this you have to use redirects and be running your own server (not a simple thing).
Internet explorer is esp. vulnerable to this type of attack as it is a very "talkative" browser and will give up almost any information asked of it if the question is worded right.
The simplest way to protect yourself from this is to use another browser.
I use FIREFOX with the No Script Add On
The next most common form is "password stealing" and it is YOU that make this exploit
possible by creating and using weak passwords.
MAKE YOUR PASSWORD STRONG
Or at least challenging. If your password is "password", or "123456" or "fluffy", you might as well broadcast it into the room as someone will steal it. Good passwords use a combination Upper case and Lower case letters and numbers:
0Hi1I2aM3HeRe4
is a good example. One thing that Gaia did get right is allowing us to use
"special" characters in creating passwords. The pass phrase: 0Hi1I2aM3HeRe4 is
strengthened 200 fold by adding these.
0Hi1I2aM3HeRe4
becomes
0Hi1I2aM3HeRe4¥
by adding the "¥" at the end.
To create this character hold down the "alt" key and type 0165 . When you release the alt key, your new character ¥ will show. You can make many others as well:
¤ = 0164,
§ = 0167
Å = 0197
¶ = 0182.
§ = 0167
Å = 0197
¶ = 0182.
Open up a notepad document and mess with it.. it's kinda cool.
You can add more than one, however i do not recommend it as logging back in can be tricky.
After changing your password using this, the next time you log in (Internet Explorer only), you will need to log in twice, as the first login will be rejected as invalid. don't panic wink
One other note, the Gaia bank does not recognize special characters, so to do trades (trades only, the marketplace sees them just fine) you will have to change your password to exclude the character.
