#19 - Oct. 6, 2009, 8:19 p.m.
Since this is likely a redirected link in the email, the actual URL is probably safe enough, but I've removed it above to avoid any potential confusion.
This is what is commonly referred to as a phish. That quite literally means someone is ‘fishing’ for information and hoping they get a bite :)
If you look at the top of this forum you’ll see a library of ones that are commonly used (or close variants thereof) under “Fake Emails from Blizzard”
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=965511383&sid=1
The proper email to report these is hacks@blizzard.com – you can forward the email, headers intact, to that address.
Phishes rely on two primal human emotions and hope they get you to react before you think through what is being asked, greed and fear. They’ll either try to entice with an offer or intimidate with a threat.
We never ‘threaten’ an account action. If we have sufficient cause to think an account has been tampered with or needs locked down, we do it first – we don’t threaten with an ‘or else’ email.
WoW accounts are certainly not the only target of phishers. They send them out purporting to be banks, credit card companies, shipping companies – all aimed at obtaining information the thief can use to your detriment.
We will also NEVER ask for your password, or ask you to sign into some website somewhere not under our domain to login.
One way to check any email is to open up the header in your email program and check to see the actual route and sender. This is done in various ways, depending on your email program, but all can do it. Internal email addresses (what you see at the top of an email) can be spoofed very easily. Where it says it came from under sender is not necessarily true. The header of that email will show the true sender. Many spam programs actually use a comparison of these to flag suspicious emails.
Links in an email are also incredibly easy to spoof and/or redirect. Just because the URL looks legit doesn’t necessarily mean that’s where it really goes. Before clicking ANY link, in ANY email, mouse over the link and look at your bottom browser bar to see where it is reported to actually be destined.
