Blizzard Email Account Change Notice ?

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.

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.

They are getting sneakier.

They actually use 'real' emails and modify where the links go to to catch folks not on their toes.

Just the fact that your browser and scanner put up warnings indicates this really wasn't to us.

Takes 5 min or less to setup a look-alike website with a URL that at first glance may not register as a fake.

Folks need to be VERY careful, very very careful.

It's easy enough to tell a real email from a fake.

A fake will send you to a site NOT Blizzard.

Also, popping open the email header and determining the true sender will tell you a lot.

Q u o t e:


We just need for all email providers to provide easier access to the headers, some you virtually have to jump hoops to get it.

I don't disagree. The information in a header is incredibly valuable - but also can be very hard to decipher.

Q u o t e:


I would make a system that would pop up a warning that couldn't be disabled if the email listed as "from" was not the same as the actual sender, unless the actual sender was someone on your contact list.

But that's just me.

That's actually the basis of many spam filters. At least the better ones :)