Keep Your Account Safe

Keeping your account safe, here on Pokémon Vortex should be your number one priority as helping you do so is ours.

We can only help you so far before it becomes your own responsibility.

Follow the steps in this guide to ensure your account remains just that - YOUR account.

The most common cause of losing your account is due to a scam.

People will send in-game messages claiming to be Pokémon Vortex administrators or representatives saying something along the lines of:

• "Your account has a problem and we need your password to correct it"

or

• "You have won a special Pokémon, please reply with your password to claim it"

This is never real - Pokémon Vortex representatives will NEVER ask you for your account information without you first presenting us with an issue you need help with. Even then, we never need your password, only a username is sufficient enough for us to correct most problems.

Other forms of scams can include people offering you "hacks" / "cheats" or "bots" - These programs they ask you to download are not normally what they say they are, they can gain access to anything on your computer if you let it. Even browser extensions are unsafe to download as they can read through personal data.

If you willingly give out your password or download programs to gain advantages in the game, you are asking to lose your account and we will likely not help as it happens too often and takes up too much time for us to keep having to retrieve your accounts.

Moving on to the main point - creating strong passwords and to stop people gaining access to your account by other means.

The second most common cause of people losing their account is people they know stealing them. If you have friends who play the game, you need to remember that they know a lot about you, if your password is your dogs name, this is the worst idea in the history of bad ideas.

So lets break it down into simple steps:

• Upon creating your account, you SHOULD use a real email address, even though it is not required, this is for your own good. If you lose access to your account whether someone stole it or you just generally forgot your password, you will never get it back because you decided to use a fake email address you have no access to. Not only this but using a fake email address like pokemon_vortex_my_account_22[at]hotmail.com - This email address likely has not yet been created on Hotmail, this will allow someone else to go and make the address and again, steal your account. Simply put, do not use fake email addresses, it's there to help you and they can be hidden in the options of the game if you wish to keep it private.
• Again, upon creating your account, you will want to make a strong and secure password.
  • A good Password:
    • Uses at least 15 characters
    • Has upper case and lower case letters
    • Is not a piece of private information such as family names or birthdays
    • Does not contain your username
    • Is not a password you use on another website
    • Has at least one special character (¬`!"£$%^&* etc)
    • Is not a keyboard pattern such as qwerty or 1234567890
  • You can use this tool to help you create strong passwords: https://strongpasswordgenerator.com/

Now obviously you're not expected to remember this password as it won't be a word or phrase you're familiar with but you can make a note of it somewhere on your computer/phone/tablet or even on paper. It doesn't matter too much if you lose it as you should have used a real email address to then be able to reset your own password and regain account control.

• Once your account is created, you will want to change your password periodically. Now this isn't essential but it just keeps it more secure if someone is ever trying to gain access to your account. I would personally suggest changing your password probably once a month. Again, don't forget to make a note of what you change it to.
• Lastly and briefly, again with the scams, once you have your account and you're enjoying your Pokémon Vortex experience, you may receive a message that doesn't ask for your password but asks you to change your email address to something other than your own. This is also a scam and they will use a password reset link to hijack your account.