Passwords are no longer case sensitive for Battle.net

I randomly noticed last week that the password to login to battle.net and wow and everything else is NOT case sensitive anymore. I recall that it was before and is now NOT. Is this a bug in the system or did you guys make passwords no longer case sensitive if so id suggest everyone go change their password like I did.

I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure it’s been like this for years now. Like, many years now!

7 Likes

I’m not sure they were ever case-sensitive. I know they weren’t pre-Battlenet.

5 Likes

Rufflebottom is correct. WoW/Battle.​net passwords have never been case-sensitive.

5 Likes

To confirm, passwords have never been case sensitive, though many had a belief they were, even among our staff.

13 Likes

Just to add to this, case sensitivity does not inherently make passwords stronger. I suppose you can make a fringe case that if someone knows your password is “abcdefg” in some form, it saves them from trying all 128 (I think that correct) permutations. But in those instances, the security of your password was already compromised well before.

Be vigiliant with your password(s), yes. But case sensitivity isn’t much of a line of defense.

2 Likes

Here is an old post from 2011 where Orlyia confirms they are not case-sensitive.

Case sensitive passwords are really only effective when there is a brute-force attack on a password. The website and bnet app have internal protections that make brute-force attacks nearly impossible, most notably timing-out attempts to login after X-amount of tries.

In that 9 year old post, Orlyia notes the common methods used to get passwords, none of which are hampered by case-sensitive passwords. Ultimately case-sensitive passwords negatively impact true customers by many, many fold than they do hackers.

7 Likes

And if I may add, it does absolutely no good when players, abeit unwittingly, just hand over the information when they fall for an ingame phish.

That seems a popular method here - 9 years later :stuck_out_tongue:

Remember we are NEVER going to just message you ingame and ask you to go log in somewhere. Our text is blue - shows in a box all it’s own, has a blizzard logo - and fun fact - a real Game Master cannot be reported with right-clicking text.

8 Likes