Apparently some big video game developers and publishers took heed of RDarken’s Account Security column last week, and dubbed this week starting February 6th “Gamer Safety Week”! (Fine, I know that was not why, but any chance to plug ourselves, right?) The “Gamer Safety Week” is no joke though. During this week, each participant company will share tips about the three “C”s; contact, conduct and content. Guild Wars 2 publisher and ArenaNet owner NCSoft is one of the participants, and you can find their contributions here.

NCSoft’s Six Top Tips to Stay Safe

1. Never share your account information with others. Not even friends or family. NCsoft employees will never ask you for your password.
2. Change your password frequently. Create new passwords every three to six months. If you use shared or public computers, you should change them more often.
3. Select a strong password. A strong password is at least six-to-eight characters long with a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters and at least one number.
4. Be careful on shared and unfamiliar computers. You never know what might be on them, or worse, you could forget to log out of your game account while using one.
5. Use a different, unique password for each of your online accounts. Creating different passwords for each account makes it that much more difficult for hackers to get to you.
6. Don’t buy from real-money traders or “power-leveling” services. Using real-world money to buy in-game currency or to pay to have your character leveled has a huge impact on the games you love. They sell you goods stolen from legitimate players and it ends up putting your account at significant risk.