World of Warcraft Account Stealing Scams
Emma Martin
May 07, 2008
With over 10 million players worldwide, it's not surprising that con artists and pranksters consider World of Warcraft a ripe marketplace to find unsuspecting victims to scam. But you can protect yourself from some of the most common World of Warcraft scams by just taking a little extra care on deciding who to trust.
A lot of WoW scams are designed to steal your account from you or steal the gold out of your account. Some are even designed to get you to hand over real money. Here's a couple of things to watch out for.
Invitations to join a Beta
Every time Blizzard announces a new expansion, i.e. Outlands or the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King, that's a cue for some scammers to launch their latest series of "Beta invitations". What happens is you'll get an email that looks like it's coming directly from Blizzard, inviting you to join the Beta for the new expansion. A link in the email takes you to a legit looking website that asks for your account name and password. You eagerly enter your information and wind up saying good-bye to your account.
You can protect yourself from this sort of thing though by just checking the header information of the email that you were sent before you run off to see what Wrath of the Lich King is going to look like. All emails from Blizzard are going to come from a Blizzard.com address. No place else!
Password Requests
Basically, any time you get an email asking for your WoW password, you should either just ignore and delete the email or report it to Blizzard. If Blizzard emails you, they will never ask for your password. They don't need it.
If you think you've received an email from Blizzard, but you never requested any assistance from them, the best thing to do is respond from the contact form on the Warcraft website rather than answering the email that you've received. If the query is legit, Blizzard will let you know. If not, you've saved yourself from getting scammed.
Also, Blizzard will not contact you in whispers needing your password either. And they also won't ask you to verify your security question and answer in a whisper.
Some other common scams are about Gold Dupe Hacks, a frequent ploy of keyloggers. You don't need to dupe gold to increase the amount of gold in your bags quickly. There are tons of ways to earn gold a lot faster. Check out Derek's Gold Farming Guide for some of the best tips on how to get more WoW gold.
A lot of WoW scams are designed to steal your account from you or steal the gold out of your account. Some are even designed to get you to hand over real money. Here's a couple of things to watch out for.
Invitations to join a Beta
Every time Blizzard announces a new expansion, i.e. Outlands or the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King, that's a cue for some scammers to launch their latest series of "Beta invitations". What happens is you'll get an email that looks like it's coming directly from Blizzard, inviting you to join the Beta for the new expansion. A link in the email takes you to a legit looking website that asks for your account name and password. You eagerly enter your information and wind up saying good-bye to your account.
You can protect yourself from this sort of thing though by just checking the header information of the email that you were sent before you run off to see what Wrath of the Lich King is going to look like. All emails from Blizzard are going to come from a Blizzard.com address. No place else!
Password Requests
Basically, any time you get an email asking for your WoW password, you should either just ignore and delete the email or report it to Blizzard. If Blizzard emails you, they will never ask for your password. They don't need it.
If you think you've received an email from Blizzard, but you never requested any assistance from them, the best thing to do is respond from the contact form on the Warcraft website rather than answering the email that you've received. If the query is legit, Blizzard will let you know. If not, you've saved yourself from getting scammed.
Also, Blizzard will not contact you in whispers needing your password either. And they also won't ask you to verify your security question and answer in a whisper.
Some other common scams are about Gold Dupe Hacks, a frequent ploy of keyloggers. You don't need to dupe gold to increase the amount of gold in your bags quickly. There are tons of ways to earn gold a lot faster. Check out Derek's Gold Farming Guide for some of the best tips on how to get more WoW gold.
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