Augment Items To Prevent Hackers Stealing Them?

YOU ALL ARE NOT SAFE. ALL YOU IDIOTS WHO RAN OUT AND BOUGHT THE "SECURITY" TOKEN. SE NOW CAN CONTROL EVERYTHING YOU OWN!!!!

Has anyone even considered you can still NPC augmented items? They'll just NPC them for at least a little more gil to swindle, rather than dropping them.

Epic. Rate up

Most likely if your account gets hacked, they will NOT sell your augmented gear. I've had two friends in the past two weeks get hacked....All of their rare/ex and augmented gear was intact, but they were stripped of all high-priced items, gil, and then moved to another server. I'm not sure what the server switch was about, but there are two reasons they most likely would never NPC the augmented gear:

1) It's chump change, they won't steal your crystals, so they most likely won't NPC your Hagun for 2k
2) They need to work quickly - They'd rather mail out your hauby +1, peacock charm, etc., rather than having the account become locked because they stopped at Aveline to NPC your Amemet+1 with lightning resist +2 and you found out about it.

Edit: Also, even if they were to NPC your gear for whatever reason, it's not like you weren't doing an account restore to get EVERYTHING back anyway.
(I think someone said this earlier)

/rant

I have to lol when I read tripe that blames "all" people who had their accounts hacked (exploited would be a more appropriate term).

We're all using FFXIAH.com and some of the ads are known for exploiting a swf security hole which is how my wife got her account taken over a while back.

I'm gonna laugh my *** off if one of the people on this site and many other FF sites with ads on them, claiming only cheaters get their accounts taken over, themselves get 0wn3d...

That said, there's no point in augmenting items to make them less likely to be lost to someone that takes over your account - just restore and learn from the mistake.

/install Firefox
/install No-Script
/install better antivirus software
/use separate pc for browsing FF related sites

..and for those stupid enough to buy gil/powerlvling/accounts... I hope you all do get hacked because you're the reason we get those stupid /tells 10 times or more a day.

/rant off

Believe it's because the high priced items/gear sells better on that server. Pay a little in to get a better payout. It may also be a lil pun to screw with your head.

I don't see how augmenting your gear will be a hacker deterrent unless it was something personal. Most hacks I'd imagine would come from compromising your account due to keyloggers/exploits within unsafe websites or using untrusted services. The other lesser half most likely from giving your account info to your in game "BFF" who really isn't and took advantage of you and your e-loot.

Whether you basically turn your pricey gear into rare/ex, it's a safe bet that either RMT or whoever jacked your account would sell everything, take all your gear and drop your rare/ex gear out of spite whether you augment it or not. Augmenting would simply cut their profits, but won't save you from having a wiped out account either way.