From: WoWAccount?ReviewEU@bl?izzard.com (this email has been auto-amended by mmorpg.com)
***Notice of Account Closure***
Account Name: (Correct Account Name)
Reason for Closure: Terms of Use Violation -- Exploitative Activity: Abuse of the Economy
This account was closed because one or more characters were identified exchanging, or contributing to the exchange of, in-game property (items or gold) for "real-world" currency. This exchange process negatively impacts the World of Warcraft game environment by detracting from the value of the in-game economy.
Even if this is the result of account sharing, the account owner can still be held responsible for the penalty because of the impact it had on the game environment.
We've found the above behavior is many times directly related to groups responsible for compromising World of Warcraft accounts; we take these issues very seriously. To better understand our position against exploitative activity and the risks involved, please review this article: http://eu.blizzard.com/support/article/goldbuying
The exploitative activity that took place on this account violates the World of Warcraft Terms of Use. We ask you take a moment to review these terms at http://eu.blizzard.com/company/legal/index.html. Any recurring subscriptions on this account have been suspended to prevent further monetary charges.
For any disputes of this action or further information on Exploitive Activity, please visit the Exploitative Activity FAQ and contact page here: http://eu.blizzard.com/support/article/41654
at almost the same time (day before) I received an illegimiate one: (which links to some .tk site) (I hadn't visited this one before the other because I saw both emails on the 12th July)
Greetings!
We have already noted that you are trying to sell your personal World of Warcraft account (s). Terms of Use
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html It will be ongoing for further investigation by Blizzard Entertainment's employees. If you wish to not get your account suspended you should immediately verify your account ownership. You must complete the steps below to secure the account and your computer.
STEP 1: ACCOUNT INVESTIGATION We now provide a secure website for you to verify that you have taken the appropriate steps to secure the account, your computer, and your email address. Please go to this site and follow the instructions:
STEP 2: VERIFY YOUR SUBMISSION WAS RECEIVED We will contact you with further instructions once we have received and processed your submission. If you do not receive a reply within 48 hours of submitting this form, please resend it from the address listed above.
Please be aware that if unauthorized access to this account, it may lead to further action against the account.
My wife and I both recieved emails from "NoReply" about our accounts, saying they need us to reenter our passwords. Really? .... Really. Is there a way to let hackers (or whomever) know that you quit and havent logged in (cause you deleted it) over 2 YEARS ago? , if so , lets get the word out to them, let us help them help themselves *nods, sips tea*.
Ive been receiving these emails for years and have not played in about 4 years. If the game were to shut down tomorrow (I wish) I would probably still get the same emails.
Hacked. All characters with any significant experience and gold and gear gone. Happened while I was watching/attempting to log in. Blizzard offers no way to report the bahavior in game as it is happening.
I have done nothing to create this situation. I have security tools installed on the pc, never interact with anyone in the game beyond a wave hello. The number of people reporting this clearly shows that the compromise is on Blizzard's end. We'll be cancelling all three accounts. First Sony, now this. No one should play these games, it's a cyber-criminal's playgournd.
What else has Blizzard allowed through their system into my pc? That's the question people should be asking, not kicking themselves for not paying extra to pretend to have security.
Same old crap. Game promises that if you follow certain steps your account can't be compromised. accounts are compromised, thousands of them , anyway. Shills for company then posit a new level of crazy careful behavior necessary on the part of users, implication that this is all their fault, isinuation that victims are lying. Here's a crazy idea: design your security systems AT YOUR END properly, so that these issues don't continually reappear. I have come to the conlusion that these games are the single largest route into people's homes and identities, and that the game companies are in denial. Sony was a case in point, and I believe Blizzard is sitting on a bigger version of the same problem. My advice: cancel all acounts, delete all game files, and walk away. They are never going to fix it, and the crooks are only going to get better at it.
Same thing happened to my wife today. Thing is I am an IT security consultant, and she plays on a hardened PC I run in a secure setup at home. We have firewalls, up-to-date OS, AV, multiple anti-malware etc etc.
I think WoW was a great game, my wife loved it, but the compromise happened while she was logged off asleep. Woke-up to find her Battlenet account unavailable and a permanent ban on her account. I spoke to Blizzard who were frankly rude and unhelpful. To put this on context we've played Wow since it first came out and were loyal customers. I have now cancelled both accounts. Spoke to a friend today, his account was hacked and banned 2 weeks ago. Googled the issue - hundreds of people having this problem. Meanwhile Chinese gold-sellers etc crowd the game and are left alone by Blizzard.
Lets face it - the game is insecure.
By playing Wow you are subscribing to a company that treats its customers like dirt and does not take security seriously.
I will never deal with this company again. Do yourself a favour and do likewise.
I left wow just before the first expansion. Shortly after that I got an email stating my pw had changed. So I went and fixed it (even though I wasnt playing anymore). When it happened again I ignored it. Now MoP is coming out and I want to play again. Id like to recover my original account so I dont have to rebuy the whole thing. Account recovery isnt working for me. It wants to 'recover' the trial account that I started a few weeks ago and doesnt seem to even see the old account. Maybe it got banned? Ive sent a ticket explaining the situation. Hopefully they respond. Might be complicated by the fact that I dont remember the old password, or cc#, and not even certain which email address I had used for the account.
Have an authenticator this time so hopefully wont happen again.
edit: Nevermind. Wasnt compromised. Was just so old that it wasnt linked to battlenet yet. Good to go now.
I returned to WoW for Mists expansion after a 1.5 year hiatus. I logged into my account, and what I see are my characters scattered across different realms, my main character had his gear sold off, all my mats in the bank and all the bags in it sold off. Only a few stupid low level recipies remained.
How is this possible where somebody can actually take control of my account and use it and play it when it has no gametime left on it? The subscription on this account expired in May of 2011, but when I chekced the achievements summary the last ones were attained by probably a Chinese gold farmer as late as August of 2011, so how is it possible for them to play with a an account that should have been dead for 3 months?
Also I have the Authenticator on this account as well, so they get through it too? I know how to check for viruses, I work in the computer security sector, I don't need a program to tell me where the infected files are, I can easily track them down through some simple command prompt commands. Blizzard security is just silly.
I have never played WoW and never really wanted to. Thought about it back when the game was first launched but not really into "fantasy swords and magic" type games like this.
Anyway, keeping in mind that I never played WoW, I recently checked my "compromised" Diablo 3 account. Found that not only had my Diable 3 account been compromised by my WoW account was "banned". Again, I never had a WoW game account. Apparently, if you play Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 or Wow all of your account info goes to just one account. When my Diablo account was compromised (another story altogether), they start a WoW game account as well.
Now, when my D3 game was compromised, Blizz did the right thing and made corrected that issue. However, they will not hear anything about removing that WoW game account. I guess they want to count me as one of those mythical 10 million subbers and don't care how they get there.
I returned to WoW for Mists expansion after a 1.5 year hiatus. I logged into my account, and what I see are my characters scattered across different realms, my main character had his gear sold off, all my mats in the bank and all the bags in it sold off. Only a few stupid low level recipies remained.
How is this possible where somebody can actually take control of my account and use it and play it when it has no gametime left on it? The subscription on this account expired in May of 2011, but when I chekced the achievements summary the last ones were attained by probably a Chinese gold farmer as late as August of 2011, so how is it possible for them to play with a an account that should have been dead for 3 months?
Also I have the Authenticator on this account as well, so they get through it too? I know how to check for viruses, I work in the computer security sector, I don't need a program to tell me where the infected files are, I can easily track them down through some simple command prompt commands. Blizzard security is just silly.
have you tried contacting customer service?
i've been compromised 3x already and they always give back my items after a couple of days.
got the key authenticator so havent been compromised since
There are people who play games and then there are gamers.
It's no wonder that Blizzard is being sued for lax security protecting peoples information and profiting from authenticators. Worst gaming company out there. Buying into Blizzard games is Pay-to-Lose
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
With so many fake blizzard emails that seems time over the past year or so I didn't sub to WoW I missed the official email warning me my account email was changed. So I now come back to a stripped account. If customer service does not make this 100% right I will just unsubscribe again.
Please use this thread to discuss account compromise issues. This can include phishing emails, account hack stories, scams, ETC. This is being done in an effort to consolidate the new posts being created daily on the same topic. Thanks.
Also, please remember our Rules of Conduct when posting.
Not sure what there is to discuss.
I can log into my spam-catcher email addy, go into my spam folder and admire the collected phishing scams..."gollee, shore is a lot of em"...but why? This addy exists only to catch those for me.
Like most people i suspect, i have several email addresses, one for games etc and the other for general use, which makes it quite amusing when i receive emails claiming to be from Blizzard to the wrong email address. Its definitely worth keeping your general use email address and the email address your MMO's are linked to, entirely seperate, as the most common cause of people losing control of their MMO accounts, for whatever game, is because their email account was hacked, its by far the weakest link in the chain, and you probably wouldn't believe how many people have the same passwords on their email accounts, as they do on various other websites/forums etc. which is pretty much the same as not having a password at all. So my advice is 1. if the game has an authenticator option, and most do these days, take advantage of it, games companies provide them, not just because they care about their customers, they do, but because in the long run it also saves them time and money from having to deal with player accounts that have been compromised. 2. Don't link your MMO's to Email accounts that are used for everyday use, keep one private as that does make them less likely to be attacked. 3. Dont use the same password for different things, particularly gaming websites, and your email login passwords, and certainly don't use the same password for your games. 4. A good firewall and antivirus these days often come with malware protection, the best ones provide active protection for when your browsing, don't rely on windows basic firewalls etc. 5. If you keep a password list in a handy word document or whatever, make sure its encrypted, because if you do get hacked, a plain text list of passwords will literally make the hackers day.
Being safe online means being aware, and that means you have to accept its not others responsibility for your safety, don't make it easy for the hackers, protect yourself, and if you can, have back ups of anything you 'need' should the worst case happen, backing up important documents or whatever to a usb drive is easy, those things hold gb's of data these days, and often cost under a tenner, just remember to not leave the usb stick plugged in all the time
I would also add, get into he habit of not using the links in emails. Just go to the site where you can usually find the information the link was taking you to.
I once saw a phishing email that took you to a paypal look-a-like-site to update your information, when you were done it returned you to the actual paypal site to login.
Like someone else said usually the return address is a dead give away and your email address may be different in the send field.
Battle.net has gotten better as I logged into my account from a computer I don't normally use and got an email right away about it.
One last thing. A good spam filter does wonders for taking out all that spam.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Hacked. All characters with any significant experience and gold and gear gone. Happened while I was watching/attempting to log in. Blizzard offers no way to report the bahavior in game as it is happening.
I have done nothing to create this situation. I have security tools installed on the pc, never interact with anyone in the game beyond a wave hello. The number of people reporting this clearly shows that the compromise is on Blizzard's end. We'll be cancelling all three accounts. First Sony, now this. No one should play these games, it's a cyber-criminal's playgournd.
What else has Blizzard allowed through their system into my pc? That's the question people should be asking, not kicking themselves for not paying extra to pretend to have security.
Comments
the legimate email:
From: WoWAccount?ReviewEU@bl?izzard.com (this email has been auto-amended by mmorpg.com)
at almost the same time (day before) I received an illegimiate one: (which links to some .tk site)
(I hadn't visited this one before the other because I saw both emails on the 12th July)
(And no account name in this one)
My wife and I both recieved emails from "NoReply" about our accounts, saying they need us to reenter our passwords. Really? .... Really. Is there a way to let hackers (or whomever) know that you quit and havent logged in (cause you deleted it) over 2 YEARS ago? , if so , lets get the word out to them, let us help them help themselves *nods, sips tea*.
Ive been receiving these emails for years and have not played in about 4 years. If the game were to shut down tomorrow (I wish) I would probably still get the same emails.
Well I got like 20 of these a day to my 1st hotmail account, so I created a 2nd hotmail account and linked my battle.net account to that one instead.
The 1st hotmail account still recieves the "compromised" emails, whilst my 2nd account recieves the legit emails.
Hacked. All characters with any significant experience and gold and gear gone. Happened while I was watching/attempting to log in. Blizzard offers no way to report the bahavior in game as it is happening.
I have done nothing to create this situation. I have security tools installed on the pc, never interact with anyone in the game beyond a wave hello. The number of people reporting this clearly shows that the compromise is on Blizzard's end. We'll be cancelling all three accounts. First Sony, now this. No one should play these games, it's a cyber-criminal's playgournd.
What else has Blizzard allowed through their system into my pc? That's the question people should be asking, not kicking themselves for not paying extra to pretend to have security.
Same old crap. Game promises that if you follow certain steps your account can't be compromised. accounts are compromised, thousands of them , anyway. Shills for company then posit a new level of crazy careful behavior necessary on the part of users, implication that this is all their fault, isinuation that victims are lying. Here's a crazy idea: design your security systems AT YOUR END properly, so that these issues don't continually reappear. I have come to the conlusion that these games are the single largest route into people's homes and identities, and that the game companies are in denial. Sony was a case in point, and I believe Blizzard is sitting on a bigger version of the same problem. My advice: cancel all acounts, delete all game files, and walk away. They are never going to fix it, and the crooks are only going to get better at it.
You are completely correct !
Same thing happened to my wife today. Thing is I am an IT security consultant, and she plays on a hardened PC I run in a secure setup at home. We have firewalls, up-to-date OS, AV, multiple anti-malware etc etc.
I think WoW was a great game, my wife loved it, but the compromise happened while she was logged off asleep. Woke-up to find her Battlenet account unavailable and a permanent ban on her account. I spoke to Blizzard who were frankly rude and unhelpful. To put this on context we've played Wow since it first came out and were loyal customers. I have now cancelled both accounts. Spoke to a friend today, his account was hacked and banned 2 weeks ago. Googled the issue - hundreds of people having this problem. Meanwhile Chinese gold-sellers etc crowd the game and are left alone by Blizzard.
Lets face it - the game is insecure.
By playing Wow you are subscribing to a company that treats its customers like dirt and does not take security seriously.
I will never deal with this company again. Do yourself a favour and do likewise.
I left wow just before the first expansion. Shortly after that I got an email stating my pw had changed. So I went and fixed it (even though I wasnt playing anymore). When it happened again I ignored it. Now MoP is coming out and I want to play again. Id like to recover my original account so I dont have to rebuy the whole thing. Account recovery isnt working for me. It wants to 'recover' the trial account that I started a few weeks ago and doesnt seem to even see the old account. Maybe it got banned? Ive sent a ticket explaining the situation. Hopefully they respond. Might be complicated by the fact that I dont remember the old password, or cc#, and not even certain which email address I had used for the account.
Have an authenticator this time so hopefully wont happen again.
edit: Nevermind. Wasnt compromised. Was just so old that it wasnt linked to battlenet yet. Good to go now.
I returned to WoW for Mists expansion after a 1.5 year hiatus. I logged into my account, and what I see are my characters scattered across different realms, my main character had his gear sold off, all my mats in the bank and all the bags in it sold off. Only a few stupid low level recipies remained.
How is this possible where somebody can actually take control of my account and use it and play it when it has no gametime left on it? The subscription on this account expired in May of 2011, but when I chekced the achievements summary the last ones were attained by probably a Chinese gold farmer as late as August of 2011, so how is it possible for them to play with a an account that should have been dead for 3 months?
Also I have the Authenticator on this account as well, so they get through it too? I know how to check for viruses, I work in the computer security sector, I don't need a program to tell me where the infected files are, I can easily track them down through some simple command prompt commands. Blizzard security is just silly.
I have never played WoW and never really wanted to. Thought about it back when the game was first launched but not really into "fantasy swords and magic" type games like this.
Anyway, keeping in mind that I never played WoW, I recently checked my "compromised" Diablo 3 account. Found that not only had my Diable 3 account been compromised by my WoW account was "banned". Again, I never had a WoW game account. Apparently, if you play Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 or Wow all of your account info goes to just one account. When my Diablo account was compromised (another story altogether), they start a WoW game account as well.
Now, when my D3 game was compromised, Blizz did the right thing and made corrected that issue. However, they will not hear anything about removing that WoW game account. I guess they want to count me as one of those mythical 10 million subbers and don't care how they get there.
Let's party like it is 1863!
have you tried contacting customer service?
i've been compromised 3x already and they always give back my items after a couple of days.
got the key authenticator so havent been compromised since
There are people who play games and then there are gamers.
http://alzplz.blogspot.com
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
Not sure what there is to discuss.
I can log into my spam-catcher email addy, go into my spam folder and admire the collected phishing scams..."gollee, shore is a lot of em"...but why? This addy exists only to catch those for me.
So my advice is
1. if the game has an authenticator option, and most do these days, take advantage of it, games companies provide them, not just because they care about their customers, they do, but because in the long run it also saves them time and money from having to deal with player accounts that have been compromised.
2. Don't link your MMO's to Email accounts that are used for everyday use, keep one private as that does make them less likely to be attacked.
3. Dont use the same password for different things, particularly gaming websites, and your email login passwords, and certainly don't use the same password for your games.
4. A good firewall and antivirus these days often come with malware protection, the best ones provide active protection for when your browsing, don't rely on windows basic firewalls etc.
5. If you keep a password list in a handy word document or whatever, make sure its encrypted, because if you do get hacked, a plain text list of passwords will literally make the hackers day.
Being safe online means being aware, and that means you have to accept its not others responsibility for your safety, don't make it easy for the hackers, protect yourself, and if you can, have back ups of anything you 'need' should the worst case happen, backing up important documents or whatever to a usb drive is easy, those things hold gb's of data these days, and often cost under a tenner, just remember to not leave the usb stick plugged in all the time
I once saw a phishing email that took you to a paypal look-a-like-site to update your information, when you were done it returned you to the actual paypal site to login.
Like someone else said usually the return address is a dead give away and your email address may be different in the send field.
Battle.net has gotten better as I logged into my account from a computer I don't normally use and got an email right away about it.
One last thing. A good spam filter does wonders for taking out all that spam.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey