World of Warcraft Blog
Web sites posing as World of Warcraft or Blizzard Entertainment are a real threat. It is important that you as an internet user can easily identify a spoofed “phishing” email.
What is a “Phishing” Email?
Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.
Here is a very common example of a World of Warcraft phishing email
Subject: Warning : World of Warcraft Account Notice
From: donotreply@blizzard.com
To: you@youremail.comAn investigation of your World of Warcraft account has found strong evidence that the account in question is being sold or traded. As you may not be aware of, this conflicts with Blizzard’s EULA under section 4 Paragraph B which can be found here:
WoW -> Legal -> End User License Agreement
and Section 8 of the Terms of Use found here:
The investigation will be continued by Blizzard administration to determine the action to be taken against your account. If your account is found violating the EULA and Terms of Use, your account can, and will be suspended/closed/or terminated.
In order to keep this from occurring, you should immediately verify that you are the original owner of the account.
To verify your identity please visit the following webpage:
World of Warcraft Account Management
Only Account Administration will be able to assist with account retrieval issues.
Thank you for your time and attention to this matter, and your continued interest in World of Warcraft.
Sincerely,
Account Administration
Blizzard Entertainment
How to identify this email as a phishing email
1. The email does not contain your World of Warcraft account name. When Blizzard Entertainment sends an account notification, the email will ALWAYS include your World of Warcraft account name.
2. Do not click on any of the links in the email. Move your mouse over the links in the email. Look at the Status Bar on your computer, the status bar will display the URL of the link. In this case the links in this email point to: 206.178.567.1/local/account.php. As you can see the link is pointing to an IP address and a directory on that IP’s domain, not an official www.worldofwarcraft.com domain. Blizzard Entertainment will only direct you to official domains those being www.blizzard.com or www.worldofwarcraft.com.
This is the most common way World of Warcraft accounts are compromised. There is one rule to live by when identfying phishing emails.
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