About a month and a half ago, we reported on the story of a player who had apparently gotten their account hacked while they were using the new Blizzard Authenticator key, and it raised a lot of questions in players’ minds about the only hardware Blizzard’s ever made: just what does the Authenticator do to protect players’ accounts? Have Authenticators actually prevented accounts from being hacked? And what would it take to, through social engineering or other methods, actually remove an Authenticator from an account?

At the time we published that first story (which was later disputed by a customer support representative), Blizzard contacted us here at WoW Insider, offering to clear up players’ concerns about the new keys. We quickly submitted to them a few questions pulled from our own writers and a few submitted by readers, and they’ve now returned the answers to us — you can find Blizzard’s answers to our questions about the Authenticator after the break. Thanks to Blizzard for answering our questions about how these keys work, and clarifying some of the issues around their security.