Originally posted by Nemorsa

It could just be a random circumstance, or the guy who tried to scam you also tried getting into your account before he sent the email, but got the wrong password to many times, I don't know, but I would never trust an email in my spam folder, all the real emails I get from Blizzard are in my inbox.

Yeah I'm usually the same way though. F'n yahoo is weird. If I get a few emails from a company after awhile it puts them into the spam folder. I've been waiting to see if I get an invite into the ff14 beta, that's the only reason I even checked the spam to see the message. Sucks. I'm not really worried about it, I'm sure they'll fix it. It just sucks because that was my last resort for a game to play during my break from school.

Originally posted by Blazeyer

Originally posted by Nemorsa

It could just be a random circumstance, or the guy who tried to scam you also tried getting into your account before he sent the email, but got the wrong password to many times, I don't know, but I would never trust an email in my spam folder, all the real emails I get from Blizzard are in my inbox.

Yeah I'm usually the same way though. F'n yahoo is weird. If I get a few emails from a company after awhile it puts them into the spam folder. I've been waiting to see if I get an invite into the ff14 beta, that's the only reason I even checked the spam to see the message. Sucks. I'm not really worried about it, I'm sure they'll fix it. It just sucks because that was my last resort for a game to play during my break from school.

I got an email from Square about how they selected all the testers for Closed Alpha, so it will be awhile before Beta I'm guessing. Send a message to Blizzard, it should get sorted. I've been playing DDO and League of Legends to pass my time during my break. I'd suggest finding one of the better F2P's to kill some time until you can get on WoW.
 

I believe it. I'm still baffled at how Blizzard could merge accounts with battlenet and your email becomes your login id. This just makes it easier for people to hack accounts.

Originally posted by Briansho

I believe it. I'm still baffled at how Blizzard could merge accounts with battlenet and your email becomes your login id. This just makes it easier for people to hack accounts.

This is the truth of the matter.

People have been posting and using their email address for website registrations all over the web and who knows where else.  Now people are using that same email address for their account logins it makes hacking so much easier.  I am willing to bet a huge number of people use the same password for various websites as they do their wow account, but figured it was ok, because they used different login names (or didn't).   This was a bad decision by blizzard.

I bet many people do not know that wowhead.com, thottbot.com and several other popular gaming information sites are owned by gold selling companies like IGE. 

Hell, a hacker only needs to hack your email account now and they have free reign to reset your wow account password and remove any trace of their deeds. 

Originally posted by Blazeyer

Originally posted by NEDM

If I am reading what you said correctly, your account has been inactive and you wanted to resub eventually? If so, then it was most likely a scam email that you received with a link to a bogus website that most likely will take your account information and ruin your account. These emails usually provide help links that actually link to the blizzard website and they even copy and paste some of the EULA / TOS sections, but one of the links is always malicious.

Yes the website directed me to a site, no I did not go. It was from a legit @blizzard email addy but I know better anyway then to click email links. As soon as I recieved this email I opened another tab went to the offical WoW site and tried to log into the "My account" where I then recieved the said message.

I just wanted to repeat that it does not matter what email address is listed as the sender of an email.  It is easily faked and any decent phishing email can be made to look like it came from anyone. 

It is smart to not click on links though.  

oh frell!!! just typed a novel and tabbed out or somethin and now gotta retype!!1 hahahah, ok, I have to EMPHASIZE that with the authenticators you have like .000001% worry about your account getting hacked through e-mail,keyloggers or any other form of phishing for your account info,  EVEN if they get all your info and contact blizz pretending to be you, they MUST have the authenticator in-hand to get access to your account and change it, $6 ppl!!!   well worth the peace of mind.. nothing is full-proof ( better alarms breed better burglars)(spelling?)  but the authenticator is a keychain sized device with a button and a LCD screen, when you log into ANY secure site from battle.net-blizz-wow you use your e-mail & password, THEN a screen pops up saying enter code, you then press the button on the authenticator and enter the code that is changed every 30 SECONDS!!! they have to be uber-pro hacks to beat that,,,  end this post and get an authenticator, you can use them on timecard accounts or CC pay accounts. in the words of NIKE  " JUST DO IT"    the OTD

 I would like to say wowzer  bliz phone support sucks. I just got off the phone with tech support (the only number that looked suitable to call). I was surprised to find out my account has infact been compromised since January. I didn't believe it at first but one of the emails that I thought were "Oh no you canceled your account again" were actually "Oh shit son you just got permaband". I guess my account was used in buying/selling of gold/items 3 months ago. So that means that I had nothing at all to do with  this hacking issue. But basically the fella on the phone told me that the people who handle account issues DONT EVEN HAVE A PHONE NUMBER and operate ONLY through email. Are you kidding me? This is probably the most important topic/issue slate people have and you restrict this set of people to email. I honestly expected a lot more from blizzard. I'm not going to cry and say I'll never play again boo hoo, because I probably will eventually. I just figured that this powerful company would have a phone on someones desk in the office of the guys who investigate these account issues.

The thing that really confuses me is that I didn't even use my pc for web browsing from early December until mid February. I got one of the droid cell phones and started using that for all my daily interweb surfing. My pc was restricted to FF11 usage only where my account remains untouched.

Originally posted by Blazeyer

Originally posted by NEDM

If I am reading what you said correctly, your account has been inactive and you wanted to resub eventually? If so, then it was most likely a scam email that you received with a link to a bogus website that most likely will take your account information and ruin your account. These emails usually provide help links that actually link to the blizzard website and they even copy and paste some of the EULA / TOS sections, but one of the links is always malicious.

Yes the website directed me to a site, no I did not go. It was from a legit @blizzard email addy but I know better anyway then to click email links. As soon as I recieved this email I opened another tab went to the offical WoW site and tried to log into the "My account" where I then recieved the said message.

I have been getting 2 to 3 of this EXACT email you mention every single day, AND another one that is similar to that email. No....they are NOT legitimate NOR from Blizzard.  As a matter of fact, the one you're talking about is the one I copy and pasted below.  As a matter of fact....I will show examples of ALL the emails I have gotten. I've received all of these over the course of just this past week. I get 2 to 3 of them a day, some that I receive are duplicates. This has been going on for about a month now.  NONE of which are legitimate.

These are copied directly and not edited, (other than when I came back to add spaces on the urls to KEEP people from clicking them).

DO NOT CLICK ON ANY LINKS IN THESE EMAILS OR COPY AND PASTE TO "FIND OUT" WHERE THEY GO.

EMAIL 1:

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: http:// ht tp://ww w.warcraft-blizzard.com/

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,
Kennalith
Account Administration
Blizzard Entertainment
DBL5YqFrc9bvf

EMAIL 2:

Greetings!

Our automated security systems have indicated that your account is insecurity. In order not to affect the normal use of your account, please check your account settings as soon as poosible.

Use the following link to review your account settings and do some modifications if necessary:
htt p://us.battle.net/maintenance.htm?ref=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.worldofwarcraft.com%252Faccount%252F&app=wam

If you cannot sign into Account Management using the link above, 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

EMAIL 3:

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:
h ttp://www.worldofwarcraft-battle-admin.com/acco unt/support/login-support.htm
Blizzard staff will verify your account information submitted in two days, please do not modify your account information during this time . It will not affect your game uptime.If you are unable to successfully verify your password .using the automated system, please contact Billing & Account Services 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 account holder. 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.
Regards,
The World of Warcraft Support Team Blizzard Entertainment

EMAIL 4:

Greetings!
This is an automated notification regarding the recent change(s)
As you may or may not be aware of, this conflicts with the EULA and Terms of Agreement.
If this proves to be true, your account can and will be disabled. 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.
If the information is deemed accurate, the investigation will be dropped.
This action is taken because we at Blizzard Entertainment take these sales
quite seriously. We need to confirm you are the original owner of the account.
This is easiest done by confirming your personal information along with concealed information about your account.
we recommend you Login verify Information your account:
htt ps://www.battle.net/account/support/login-su pport.xml
If you ignore this mail your account can and will be closed permanently. Once we verify your account,
we will reply to your e-mail informing you that we have dropped the investigation.
billing@blizzard.com. Account security is solely the responsibility of the account
holder. 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.
Regards,
Blizzard Entertainment Inc Account Administration Team
P.O. Box 18979, Irvine, CA 92623
Blizzard Entertainmen

EMAIL 5:

As a World of Warcraft operating company - Blizzard, we have been persistent to create a fair gaming environment for the effort.
To this end we will regularly account for all members to conduct random checks of records of transactions, it is unfortunate that in this time we have evidence to prove your account of illegal transactions.
Please visit ht tp://ww w.worldofwarcarft.com/ verify your account, or we will lock your account.

Blizzard Abuse Department.

EMAIL 6:

When we carry out a routine check when the account, we have evidence to show that your account has been involved in the disputed transactions.
So we have to inform you visit our website( htt p://w ww-battle.net ) fill out some information to facilitate our investigation.
If you can not tie in with our soon we will have to temporarily lock your account.

Sincerely,
Blizzard, Inc.
Copyright @2004-2010 Blizzard, Inc. All rights reserved.

EMAIL 7:

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:
http://w ww.battle.net/account/support/lo gin-support.xml

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

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Now, granted some of these are very good fakes, and some are so obvious they wouldn't fool a 4 year old. But I'm guessing you fell for one of the convincing ones. I have talked to Blizzard Customer Services and they have confirmed that ALL of these are fakes. So BE AWARE.

I have also received more than one of several of these. My account is fine, by the way, so....just know that these criminals are getting slick. A few of them could take lessons from some of the others though. Some of them are totally laughable.

ANOTHER THING:

When you see what appear to be legitimate LINKS (as some of the above DO) NOTE that when you mouseover the link and look to see where it goes....they are REDIRECTS. They do not GO to where the link SAYS it goes. This is probably how you got duped. The ones that appear legitimate links do not link from your email as they do above.

BOTTOM LINE:

Never ever ever ever trust an email from "Blizzard." If you are curious regarding what any of them say, go to Blizzard's official site in a different browser, or call the number on your game box, etc.  Blizzard will never ask for your password for ANY reason.

Edit: Added a space to all urls to try to HELP people who can't resist clicking on links. There seem to be a lot of these people using the internet these days. lol

Originally posted by girlgeek

ANOTHER THING:

When you see what appear to be legitimate LINKS (as some of the above DO) NOTE that when you mouseover the link and look to see where it goes....they are REDIRECTS. They do not GO to where the link SAYS it goes. This is probably how you got duped. The ones that appear legitimate links do not link from your email as they do above.

Not necessarily a redirect, but just a fake hyperlink. If the link led to an address that used code to lead you to another address or domain, then it would be a redirect. Otherwise, everything you say is true about these emails.  I've been getting some pretty lazy ones lately like this one:

----

In view of recent, we have received too many from other players on your complaint we must to verify your account.please login http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/ as soon as possible with our current inspection or we will lock your account, forever.

Regards,
Blizzard Inc.

----

The link actually led to an "hk" domain extension and the return path was to some random Hotmail account.

If ever in doubt about an email that says something has been done to your account, just manually go to the official WoW site and log in there.  You will know immediately if something is really wrong.  I have http://www.worldofwarcraft.com bookmarked, so I just hit the link and trust I am going there.  This applies to any website you have to log into.

well if you look at the link it tells you.. it goes to some strange site NOT blizzard. Do like others have said.. DELETE them. I get the same thing for AION, WOW.. I get 2-4 each week. Your account was not hacked .. click the link and give them the info and it will be hacked.

i recently had my closed account hacked as well.  They put an authenticator on it too, so i couldnt get to it either.  So i cahnged the pasword so niether of us coult get to it.  After my account was fully restored (about 4days) i paid the 6.50 for the authenticator cuz it worked so well keeping me out, lol.  small price to pay for piece of mind.

 Guys I don't know if you were still talking to me with all the posts of the emails etc. But I've mentioned a very many times I DID NOT CLICK ANY LINKS. but...

Bliz restored my account. I was promised some free play time but haven't got any word on that yet. I was completely emptied out so they gave me 65 or so random epics. I'm like loaded with epics. I have 2-3 of a few as well, it's pretty funny and somewhat sad. My gearscore is 4625 now. I used to be skinning/mining 450/450 but whoever was using my account got me JC443. So JC443/Mining450 now haha. My 67 mage IS COMPLETELY WIPED. I have nothing, nada. No equipment whatsoever. All crafts for that toon remain the same. I'm missing about 2kg in crafting mats though. In cash I was probably taken for 3-4k g, another 2-3k in mats.

I'm still waiting to see if I'll get the time they promised me, hopefully but I'm not going to make a big deal about it. I use my on-screen keyboard now for password/username entry.

I received an email today with account recovery instructions.  Curiously I went to my old guild forums and sure enough someone made a post about my paladin alt being logged in and not responding to tells.  It has been over six months since I've logged in, and WoW has long been completely cleaned off my computer, so I don't know.  The email account I registered WoW under has been my personal communication email for a while now.  I have a separate gmail account that gets all the social network and forum registration junk.  I also make an effort at keeping my pc clean and secure.  I also have a variety of jibberish passwords that I use.

Greetings,

We have determined that the World of Warcraft account xxxxxxxxxxx has been accessed/compromised by someone not authorized to do so by the World of Warcraft Terms of Use (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html).

To protect your privacy and security, we have temporarily disabled this account. Any recurring subscriptions have been suspended to prevent further monetary charges. In order to regain access to the account, you must complete the steps below to secure the account and your computer.

Please keep this email for your reference until the account recovery process has been completed.

STEP 1: SECURE THE ACCOUNT, YOUR COMPUTER AND YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS
Account compromises most often occur when a player shares login information with an unauthorized third party or plays on a computer that has a virus, Trojan, or key-logger. We recommend you read and apply the following tips to protect yourself and the account.

- Unauthorized Account Access Policy: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/20460
- World of Warcraft Account Security: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/20572
- Computer Security: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/21118
- Email Address Security: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/28585

STEP 2: RECOVER THE ACCOUNT
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:
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/securitywebform

STEP 3: 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 continues after the recovery process is complete, it may lead to further action against the account.

Regards,
Blizzard Entertainment
www.WorldofWarcraft.com

Yup. Looks like accounts that haven't been migrated across to the Battle.net have been hacked on Blizzard's end. Theres just too many cases for there to be any other reason. I'll give you an example

Guy quit playing WoW 15-16 months ago. During that time he has a brand new computer. Has never had WoW installed that computer nor any WoW related items. His account was hacked. A friend of his who still plays the game rang him up and told him what happened. It was the first time in a long time he had even thought about WoW. He had not visited any WoW related websites and had not typed in his user name or password since he had his new computer.

Even if he had a key logger on his computer it wouldnt have made any difference. A key logger can only log what you type, not read your mind.

And in my own personal guild a friend who quit the game 11 months ago suddenly appeared online and emptied out my guild bank and gold. After speaking to my friend I learned that he did not have WoW installed, has not been to any WoW related websites and has not even typed in his user name/password since he last played.  He did not have the user name/password saved on his computer, infact, he couldnt even remember what his user name/password even was.

So, Blizz fanbois, explain that. Obviously the system that they keep the old un-migrated accounts has been hacked on Blizzards end, or someone has had unbelievable luck in brute force attacks.

I put in a ticket to have my guild bank restored and within 16 hours not only had my ticket been looked at by a GM, it was passed onto Blizzard's investigation team and everything was restored. In 16 hours. Since the Activision-Blizzard merger and the reduction in GM's you dont even get tickets looked at within 16 hours. The fact that Blizzard were sooooooo keen and anxious to fix this, to me at least, clearly indicates Blizzard have something hide, because lets face it, WoW's customer service has gone to hell since the Activision-Blizzard merger.

I received a phish e-mail from wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com as well. I took the steps to check out where the e-mail originated from, which was actually some e-mail address called wrtgfhgf.org or somesuch, it did NOT come from Blizzard.

I got a few other phishing e-mails as well since resubbing for a month. This has stopped since I changed the e-mail associated with my battle.net account.

All I can suggest is to spawn a new, virgin e-mail address for your battle.net account and nothing else. You will stop getting the phishing e-mails, and if you never migrated your WoW account over to battle.net then realize that there's a huge security loophole in their old system, which others have alluded to in this thread.

You may not like migrating your account over, but it's much, much safer. And I have a suspicion when Cata hits it will be mandatory.