Fake WoW phishing attempts

[Alawen Everywhere]

How many of you are getting spammed with poorly done letters doctored to look like they're from Blizzard? I've been getting them since I signed up for the Project 1999 forums. They're usually poorly done, with terrible grammar and many misspellings and always aimed at some site like wow-battle-net-investigation.com.

I think the forum database may be compromised.

[Agecroft]

Been getting them for about 6mo now. First one had me LOL'ing.

We have suspect you account have been involved in the disputed transactions

Or something like that. I can't believe some people fall for them.

[girth]

Yeah I've been deleting them for a while now.

[Kinamur1999]

this is the first ive ever heard of it...

[Taxi]

First time i hear about it as well, those bad grammar ones in city of heroes were hilarious though, they asked if you were "Bored on the leveling way?" and then try to sell you some PL, just hand over your account info!

[Agecroft]

Bored with the game? Let US play for you!

[Phallax]

Yea appearantly my LOTRO account has been comprimised....Yet Ive never played the game lol.

[Alifeyl]

I've been getting them for months - long before I joined Project 1999.

[mr.miketastic]

I get sometimes up to 5 a day at an email address that has nothing to do with my old (inactive for 3 years) WoW account. I like to go to their fake sites and leave BS usernames and passwords that usually make pejorative references to their mothers and their possible predilections toward bestiality (proxy condom on of course)

It makes me giggle

[Xumosa]

Yeah ive been getting them for awhile now, way before i joined p99 though

Theres actually been a few posts on the blizzard/wow websites about this, its been getting waaay worse then it has ever been before

Some of the emails are actually starting to look extremely legit too, I know there was talk about making authenticators mandatory for awhile how far that has gotten i dont know

[Uaellaen]

never gotten this, never signed up to WoW either ...

[President]

Shitloads of them. Thankfully for google spam filter, I don't have to see any.

[Tallenn]

I actually got a real email from Blizzard about my account being compromised, and it was. It took me a couple of weeks to get everything straightened out, too. They cleaned me out pretty good (pretty much ALL of my gold, most of my gear that was worth DE'ing, all tradeskill stuff, etc), but Blizzard replaced everything they took, as far as I can tell. I haven't played since some time last year, so I can't know for sure, but it looks about right to me.

What really had me stumped is HOW my account was hacked. I use strong passwords that are completely random series of characters and digits, so there is no way to figure them out by researching me. At first, I thought maybe it was that they had figured out my secret question, but all that would have done was to reset my password, and send that message to my email. Then I realized I had made a critical error: I used the same passwords for online forums and stuff like that, also using the same email address to register. Stupid, rookie mistake. I've since changed all of my passwords for everything else.

So, just a warning: don't use the same passwords for online forums as you do for important stuff. It seems that not all of those things use encrypted passwords. IN some of them, the form owner can access your information, including your password. It's probably a good idea to use an email account you have JUST for that purpose, as well.

[Rogean]

Yea, the forums aren't compromised.

[Glaena]

I have a WoW account, but I got one of those on a DIFFERENT email account (LOL), before I started coming here.

[jilena]

Yeah I have like 6 wow accounts and I get probably 10 different spam emails a day. They are getting all clever now too like YOU HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED CATACLYSM BETA AMERICAN PIGDOG. I also get some on email accounts that have never been associated with WoW in any way lol.

[Skaff]

Has Nigerian royalty shown interest in WOW accounts recently?

[BuzWeaver]

I've been getting them for well over a year now, joining BattleNet with my main email address was a HUGE mistake. I've even contacted Blizzard in reference to the issue. They made a few suggestions that have helped, but once they have your email address they're relentless.

[Agecroft]

Wow. Just a heads up that I got another one today and they're getting smarter.

It looked very legit and had a link which displayed as www.worldofwarcraft.com/account but was actually a link to some other bs site.

Hello,

This is an automated notification regarding your World of Warcraft account. Your account Contact & Shipping Addresses was recently modified through the Account Management website.

If you made this change to your account, please disregard this automatic notification.

*** If you did NOT make any changes to your account, we recommend you login to Account Management at the following link to review your account settings:
bs url

If you cannot sign into Account Management using the link above, or if unauthorized changes continue to happen, please contact Blizzard Billing & Account Services for advanced assistance.

Thank you for your time and attention to this matter, and your continued interest in Blizzard Games.

Regards,

Account Support Team
Blizzard Entertainment

[Lonedrahon25]

Yep, get em all the time. If your worried about them, just go to worldofwarcraft website manually, and check your account status, if it should be frozen, then it probably isnt hacked. Also go and check the subscription history, if there was ever a time where it was activated outside of what u know, then it may have been hacked. But i never click on links that i get in emails unless i know exactly who and where its coming from.

[Gorgetrapper]

I wouldn't believe any of those emails unless the people at blizzard really are 13 year old typists. So many grammatical errors and just plain... terrible use of the English language.

[gnomishfirework]

I haven't gotten one of these in a while.

I actually have my Aion account hacked. I never visited any sites that would contain keyloggers (I scanned my computer.) I also never logged in from any non-official sites and my username/login I ONLY used for aion. They had my NCSoft master account too, which was raelly weird cause I had to go through all these hoops to get my password reset.

The dudes leveled up my templar to 45 (from 23) which would have been awesome if I hadn't already decided to quit.

Its really weird though cause it was obviously used just to farm, and they botted it (very few if any quests done and gear was really subpar). Templars are REALLY slow to level, they could have made a chanter or any other class and outleveled the Templar in a day. So strange, and I still don't know how they hacked it. My friend did know my PW and Username and his wow account was continuly hacked for a period around then, so it might have been from the keylogger he had downloaded.

Only thing I can think of.

This is why I hate hate hate people who buy in-game gold/items/& accounts. They create the demand which allows these criminal activities into the game. I think laws should be passed to cover sales of in-game items so people can be prosecuted for this shit, because we can't get the farmers/scammers becasue they are in other countries.

Make the penalty like you can't access the internet for life and you go on the sex offender list. Really extreme. =P

Seriously though, some of these scams would easily reach felony levels if you apply a monetary value to the accounts (which in some cases could be pretty high.) I was offered $1200 for a Sony account I had (I should have taken it =P) It had a 70 ranger in top end game gear + a ton of other Chars on EQ and a jedi in SWG. The offer was made a week before they made SWG into some stupid twitch shooter. I turned it down because it was a significant amount of money, but I was too attached to my ranger =P Even though I didnt play, I just couldn't part with it. The guy originally offered me just $800 for the jedi but I explained I had other accounts on the sony account and he raised the offer because he played EQ.

[Tallenn]

Some of them ARE very convincing. The only way to protect yourself in those cases, is to ignore the links in the email, and go to the company's web site using you OWN shortcuts, or just typing in the address by hand.

NEVER click on a link to a company website in an email, even if you think you are 100% sure the email is legit. It isn't going to cause you any inconvenience to use your own bookmarks.

[Tallenn]

Oh, and I'm really starting to think this isn't a result of phishing, or other mistakes by account holders (or at least only a result of it). I've been reading the WoW forums over the last couple of days, and there have been a CONSIDERABLE number of accounts hacked very recently, over the last 2-3 months. The sheer numbers suggest that they got in some other way. I find it hard to believe that hundreds of thousands (perhaps more than a million) of people suddenly got stupid about account security all at the same time. This was a coordinated attack by someone.

[astarothel]

Things you won't ever hear Blizzard talk about:

Once upon a time my account got hacked. It was nothing I did wrong, rather a lapse on the security on their servers. In the span of 5-10 minutes nearly 1000 accounts were compromised. Accounts were restored (eventually for the most part, minus any lost gold) and victims were even offered free Blizzard Authenticators. (Because obviously a 10$ authenticator, which apparently now isn't even as idiotproof as Blizzard would like to have you believe, is clearly worth the 60-75k gold I had, AMIRITE?)

[km2783]

I don't have any in my spambox amongst the plethora of viagra, overseas narcotic painkiller, other pharmacy, and penis enlargement emails in there. The most HILARIOUS one said "Make your penis longer than the Great China Wall."

Some of the best Engrish ever.

[Tallenn]

Actually, they restored everything, including all gold, to my account, as near as I can tell.