Possible phishing e-mail?

#0 - Aug. 19, 2010, 2 p.m.

I received this e-mail this morning and it appears official but I did not make any changes to anything. Can someone tell me if it might be official or not? It is saying it was mailed by hotmail.com so thatmakes me thing it is not official and then also the e-mail saying WoWAccountAdmin. The account subject is Battle.net Account Management.

fromBlizzard Entertainment <[email protected]>
to (e-mail removed)

dateThu, Aug 19, 2010 at 7:40 AM
subjectBattle.net Account Management
mailed-byhotmail.com

hide details 7:40 AM (1 hour ago)

Hello,
This is an automated notification regarding your World of Warcraft account. Your account options was recently modified through the Account Management website.
If you made this change to your subscription type, please disregard this automatic notification.
*** If you did NOT make any changes to your account or subscription, we recommend you login to Account Management at the following link to review your account settings:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/billing/
If you cannot sign into Account Management using the link above, or if unauthorized changes continue to happen, please contact Blizzard Billing & Account Services for advanced assistance.
Billing & Account Services can be reached at 1-800-59-BLIZZARD (1-800-592-5499 Mon-Fri, 8Am-8PM Pacific Time) or at [email protected].
Account security is solely the responsibility of the accountholder. Please be advised that in the event of a compromised account, Blizzard representatives will typically lock the account. In these cases the Account Administration team will require faxed receipt of ID materials before releasing the account for play.
Regards,
The World of Warcraft Support Team
Blizzard Entertainment

Orlyia

#2 - Aug. 19, 2010, 2:21 p.m.

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.