Fake WoW phishing attempts

[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.