Key word being 'a while' here. Experience shows that if you stay inactive for say half a year and you happen to have your account compromised in the meantime the GMs will not assist in bringing any of your gear back.

It sounds like you may have had a bad experience, Optimist, but that statement isn't entirely true though. Whenever we confirm an account to be compromised (eg. through a virus, keylogger, phishing...), we will try our best to restore it to what it was before. But, to recover lost items or gold, we have to confirm those losses in our logs first and those are time-sensitive.

Yet, even in the worst case scenario where the original items/gold can't be restored anymore, we would not just leave effected characters naked. It would be very hard to pick up questing again or running dungeons when a character has no gold or gear after all.
In those case we usually hand out some replacement (green) gear instead. That gear wouldn't get a character into competitive raiding or PVP, but it should get it up-and-running again at least. ^^

On a side note, if you keep an Authenticator active on an account, even during a break, then you will maintain that extra layer of security as well. Your account would then just be inactive, which is what Zaxithorne was referring to.

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