Give Us The Details For The Account You Don’t Have

This morning I received the following email:

*** NOTICE OF FINAL WARNING **

Account Action: 3 Hour Suspension

Account Offense: Violation of EULA and Terms of Service – Transfer of Account Ownership

Details: An investigation of your World of Warcraft account has found strong evidence that the account in question is being sold or traded. In accordance with EULA section 4, Paragraph B, listed below:

World of Warcraft -> Legal -> End User License Agreement

and Section 8 of the Terms of Use:

Blizzard Entertainment -> Legal -> Terms of Use

A 3-hour probationary suspension is pending on this account, awaiting confirmation from a specialist. A final warning has been issued. The investigation will be continued by the Account Administration team to determine the any further suspensions. If the account in question is found in violation of the EULA and Terms of Use, further action will be taken. Be aware that any additional inappropriate actions may result in the permanent closure of the account.

Thank you for respecting our position on this matter.

=========================================================
** We request that you verify your legitimate ownership of the account here:

(https://us.battle.net/login/login?service=https%3A%2F%2Fbattle.net%2Faccount%2Findex.html)
=========================================================

Any disputes or questions concerning this account action can only be addressed by Account Administration. To learn more about how Account Administration is able to assist you, please visit us at http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowaa/.

Account security is solely the responsibility of the accountholder. Please be advised that in the event of a compromised account, Blizzard representatives typically must lock the account. In these cases the Account Administration team will require faxed receipt of ID materials before releasing the account for play.

Please visit the World of Warcraft Policies and Terms of Use Agreement: (http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm01712p) and (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/termsofuse.shtml) for further information.

Regards,

Billing & Account Administration
Blizzard Entertainment
http://www.blizzard.com/support/accountadmin/

This is odd because I don’t have a World of Warcraft account. Okay, no, technically I do have a WoW account, but it was a 15-day trial account on the European servers and I only played it for three days. Why would I be trying to sell that account?

The answer: I’m not. This is a phishing email. That long link that they want me to click, the one for the site that they want me to go to to verify my details? Yeah, that URL isn’t where the link actually takes you to (and, in the interests of security, I’ve changed the link on the information above – you’re all smart people and I know you wouldn’t fall for a scam like this, but better to be safe than sorry).

I don’t usually bother sharing this sort of email with you, but as this is the first WoW-related phishing message I’ve received I figured it was worth sharing. It’s interesting how the game has become so incredibly mainstream that scam artists (and I’m loathe to use the word “artist” to describe someone who tries to scam money out of others) can mass-send emails like this.

Extraordinary.