I have an e-mail I use purely for WoW, that is linked to my other e-mail. I've never recieved a single phishing attempt on the WoW e-mail. I get about 5 a day on the main e-mail. 

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Be advised that the "trial" might have been part Firelands promotion that Blizzard has been running lately. (they have been activating accounts for 7 days).
Also Blizzard will never send you an email saying that your account is being investigated, you're either banned (and they send you an email saying that your account is banned) or you're not. (again no email is sent saying that you are being investigated) 

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Sec I'm not sure this is correct. On the 10th July I had an illegitimate email, on the 11th I had a legimate one. At the time I assumed the 10th and 11th were both legit, although I don't believe I went to the illegimate site in the illegimate one. I will link the legimiate one in second.

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Blizzard has been giving some 7 day free trials to old vets here and there. I got an email stating my account was eligible for a 7 day trial, but of course I went to battle.net myself to verify this.

My account showed frozen, because I havent renewed in a year, but it had a link in my account that said start a free 7 day trial, or something to that measure. I clicked it and I was able to play for 7 days and then it went back to being frozen.

Yes, some are getting 7 day trials, however there are not ativated until the person logs into there battle.net account and clicks the link provided.

Also I have three emails I generally use. One for personal use, another for junk mail, and one strictly for my MMO accounts.

ALL three email accounts get hit with the same emails as you described above. But I noticed one thing, none of the battle.net emails used my name except for one. And that was the email for the 7 day trial which actually came to the right email address.

If your name is not listed in the email, I'd say 99.9% its a fake. If you do get an email with your name in it, dont assume it is not fake. Dont click on the links. Go to Battle.net and log in manually and check the information given out.

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Ah ok on the trials, this would hopefully suggest I only got breeched the first time.

the legimate email:

From: WoWAccount?ReviewEU@bl?izzard.com (this email has been auto-amended by mmorpg.com)

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***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.

If you believe your account was compromised, please go to the following website https://eu.battle.net/account/support/account-recovery.html. Our support staff will assist you as soon as possible. If you are unable to access your account due to the password being changed, please visit our Login Support site here: https://eu.battle.net/account/support/password-reset.html

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

Regards,

Customer Services
Blizzard Entertainment Europe
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/

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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)

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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:

http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/securitywebform

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.

Fare Thee Well,

Game Master Dunarthra
Customer Services
Blizzard Entertainment 2011
http://www.blizzard.com/support

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(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.

Originally posted by f1seb

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 :3