[email protected]

#0 - Jan. 20, 2010, 7:13 a.m.
Blizzard Post
Is this a legit Blizzard email? I ask because about 3 days ago i was receiving messages stating that my password had been changed on my account. I have 2 accounts and when I try to log onto both through the account tab on the WoW homepage, I apparently still have the PWs to both accounts. One of my accounts has been inactive for a year but I can still log onto the account management and this current account I'm using has an authenticator hooked to it.

Now I'm receiving emails (13) stating that it has been reported that I'm trying to sell my account, which obviously I wouldn't be if I'm talking about this on the forums.

The email I actually received was from "[email protected]" stating a "Delivery Status Notification (Failure)‏" and the message was a forwarded message from the email in the topic to random people that I do not know. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.
#2 - Jan. 20, 2010, 7:17 a.m.
Blizzard Post
Phishes often use a legitimate address in the From: portion that displays inside an email, Andressa.

That doesn't mean that is who sent it - you need to check the internal routing headers to verify where any email comes from.

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 [email protected] – 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. If a URL has a hyphen in it, that's NOT the same thing as a period in a domain. They are hoping to catch folks unaware that just breifly glance at the URL. Cleverly misspelled domains are another trick often used.

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.