maandag 30 augustus 2010

Spam through the roof..

Hey, finally a new post from me..
I know, i have been ignoring my blog for a very long time, but i am still alive :)

The WoW spam i have been recieving lately has gone through the roof, or to be clearer the phishing spam has.

Somehow they managed to get a hold of two of my email adresses, which are both not even used for WoW, go figure.
Of course there has been plenty of warnings, personally i made a rule of always going directly to the (official) WoW website and log in there and (of course) i use an authenticator so i should be safe (?).

I have been getting these in the last few weeks/months almost on a daily base and from what i read among the blogs a lot of people are getting them.

A spam example:
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/

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 billing@blizzard.com.

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
http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowindex/

Obviously the links in this email look legit but clicking on them actually brings you to a completly different site.

Just a few nore of the headers as an example, "Battle.net Account Issue -- Account Locked Notice", "World of Warcraft Subscription Reminder", "Battle.net -- Login Account Changed Confirm", "World of Warcraft -- Character Faction Change Notice", "Cataclysm Beta Opt-In", "Blizzard Store Order#(random number)".

When i innitially recieved them i wasn't to concerned, as i said i use an authenticator and my email program and sometimes my email provider marks these emails as spam (they automaticly get a tag on the subject line like: [spam] or *****SPAM*****), while the official WoW mails get through just fine.
But after a while i was getting worried they might be messing with my account (i had not played or logged in to WoW for quite some time), but after logging in through the official website i saw that my account was just fine.

Just a few days ago i even started getting those type of emails for Aion, a game i never even played/tried, eventhough i do have some play time i believe from when Tabula Rasa shut down.

Anyway just a reminder, never click on an email link always go to the official website (i don't even do it on the official emails), check if the email adress you are recieving it on is the right one for your account (in my case i am getting spam on two seperate email adresses that i never used for the game), and when you can (like WoW) use an authenticator.
And another thing to notice, they official Blizzard (order) emails always have you first name in it.

Anyways: Play safe!