Kree's World of Warcraft Guild Leader Blog: Authenticator

Blizzard has come out and announced that there has been a great influx of phishing scams lately. In fact, I actually got one under my gmail account (none of my accounts are tied to this email address).

I know a lot of other sites and blogs have addressed this lately but I think it is a pretty important topic. Account security is something that every player should care about. It sucks to lose all that hard work to a careless mistake and if you are in a guild it could effect more than just yourself (we had an officer hacked and lost the whole guild bank last year).

This is the contents of the phishing e-mail that I received recently:

Greetings,

An investigation of your World of Warcraft account has found strong evidence that the account in question is being sold or traded. As you may not be aware of, this conflicts with Blizzard's EULA under section 4 Paragraph B which can be found here: WoW -> Legal -> End User License Agreement
and Section 8 of the Terms of Use found here:
WoW -> Legal -> Terms of Use

The investigation will be continued by Blizzard administration to determine the action to be taken against your account. If your account is found violating the EULA and Terms of Use, your account can, and will be suspended/closed/or terminated.
In order to keep this from occurring, you should immediately verify that you are the original owner of the account.

To verify your identity please visit the following webpage: https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/login/login?service=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.worldofwarcraft.com%2Faccount%2Findex.html
Only Account Administration will be able to assist with account retrieval issues. Thank you for your time and attention to this matter, and your continued interest in World of Warcraft.

Sincerely,

Account Administration
Blizzard Entertainment

This was a scam. How did I know?

Well aside from the aforementioned fact that I have no accounts tied to my gmail account the e-mail came from noreply@blizzard.com. A legit e-mail in this nature would come from wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com (noreply IS a legit Blizzard e-mail address but they do not use it for important personal contact).

The biggest tip-off is that although the link shows it will bring you to www.worldofwarcraft.com it actually points to http://battlenetlogiin.110mb.com/. Notice that there is an extra i in the login. Also notice that there is no blizzard.com or worldofwarcraft.com in the address.

It looks legit, how do I check?

First, don't click through on the e-mail. Open a new browser and go to worldofwarcraft.com and log into your account that way and check your account that way. You can also try logging into the game and see if it is truly being reported (petition a GM if you need to).

DO NOT fill out any of the form that you get posted to. Blizzard has all your information already, they do not need you to give it to them again (especially your password).

Ok it's fake, now what?

Forward the e-mail to hacks@blizzard.com. I know this is what they say to do, although I never got a confirmation or a reply as to my forward but at least they have it to investigate.

How to protect yourself:

Do yourself a favor and get an authenticator. I toted the wonders of it before but now there is an even easier way (especially since the fob is nearly always sold out). Blizzard just released an iPhone/IPod application that works as an authenticator. They plan on making it for other mobile phones in the future as well. I already have the authenticator fob so I haven't downloaded the new authenticator app but I hear that it works just the same and is very good. Best of all, it is free (as opposed to the bank breaking $6 of the fob).

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Although WoW is a game it has real world problems, such as Identity Fraud, sort of. I am talking specifically about the problem of being hacked. And as a guild leader or officer it means larger implications and more headaches than just losing your gear. As I mentioned in one of my first posts, one of our officers was hacked a little over a month ago. Seeing as officers had a lot of access to the guild bank we lost a lot of items and about 4,000 gold. Luckily we were able to get back most of the items(although not the gold) and the officer was able to get his account restored. Still, this took about 2-3 weeks before everything was restored.

To help prevent this from happening Blizzard has come up with a little item called the Authenticator.

It's been around a while but out of stock in the Blizzard store until yesterday so I decided that now is the time to let you know about it. It costs you a measly $6.50 (plus tax if applicable and no shipping costs). You associate your account with the authenticator and every time you log in you need to enter the code given on the authenticator. The code changes(it's based of the time I believe) so each time you log in there is a new number for you. You can even associate multiple accounts to the authenticator, just in case you are one of those with a few accounts(or want to share with family members or roommates).

Yes, it is a little annoying to have to do that every time but its either that or get hacked by all the nubs out there who imbed stuff in your favorite addons/websites/etc to keylog your account info so they can get a few thousand gold off you. I'd personally rather not leave it up to chance, especially considering I have access to multiple accounts and lots of resources in the guild bank. I don't want that headache.

If they become sold out again just wait and don't buy them off eBay for $80 a pop. Chances are those are the same people who are hacking your account anyways.

The Blizzard Authenticator can be purchased here. If you aren't using US servers then there are links on the website to purchase Authenticators for other server locations.

Oh and if you play on a Mac, you aren't as safe as you think. The officer who was hacked was a Mac user.

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