Beware of Scams and hackers on WoW

As fun as online game World of Warcraft (WoW) maybe for millions of people around the world, scams and hackers do exist on WoW and all players need to be aware of it. There are people out there that will try to scam you for your WoW account information and use it to hack into your account to steal everything you have on your WoW characters.

The above message as shown in picture is a common scam message that send out to random WoW players that try to scam players to go visit their site and steal players account information. These scams often contain similar message saying "you're a lucky winner", "get a free pet", "get your free mount", the one thing in common is that they will all have a web site attach to these scam messages. DO NOT FALL FOR IT!!

Many of these web site from scams messages will contain the name "WoW" or "Blizzard" to make it look convincing, and their web site will no doubt will look like a legit Blizzard web site. Their player names will sometime contain "WoW" or "Blizzard" in it to make it looks like the message is from Blizzard employee, but it's not. The player name from the picture above for example "Usblizzwow" to make it looks like it's from Blizzard.

One thing for sure, and this is also warn by Blizzard, is that, Blizzard will NEVER EVER Message you in game for any news. Any news or event will be posted on the actual Blizzard site (www.worldofwarcraft.com), or on your log in screen. Any pet Blizzard giving out will come directly in your in game mail box. And unless you are expecting to talk to a GM (Game Master), no employee of Blizzard will EVER message you in game!! And that including someone who may try to pose as a GM. Remember that! If you get these kind of messages in game, make sure you report them to Blizzard. Because they do track these kind of illegal activities and take any legal action require against these hackers who try to scam you.

I had a scam message once that this individual is posing as a GM to message me try to get me go visit a site. And this is what that message looks like:

[xxxxxxx] whispers: hello!
[Game Master]GM: Your world of warcraft account has been temporarily suspened. go to http://www. xxxxxxxxxx.com/wow.html for further information

A Very Clever deception indeed! I'm sure many players have fell for that convincing looking message that "looks" like it's from a GM. But it's not. Don't fall for it! I blank out the actual web site because I do not want to risk anyone who might be curious enough to go visit it. It is UNSAFE to visit their site. If you happened to visit one of these scam sites, run a few scans on your computer for viruses!! You do not want to risk all your personal information be stolen as well.

The consequence of you giving out your WoW account information to one of these fake Blizzard site is a guarantee hack on your account. You will loose everything on your characters. All your gold, your equipments that you're wearing, all the stuff you keep in the bank, and event guild bank stuff will be gone! And they will take everything from you for every characters that you have across the different WoW servers!

The latest scheme from these hackers is to transfer your rich character to another server and make you pay for that character transfer from Blizzard. The reason for the transfer is so that they can take your gold to another server to make money. This is why they scam you and hack you. Its so that they use those gold they steal from players and turn around to sell WoW gold online to make real money. This is why Blizzard will ban or suspend any players who're caught buying gold online for WoW!

Stories of those who got their account hacked

This happened to one of my online friends recently. This is over 2 months ago. He said he went to Blizzard site to buy in game pet. The next thing he knows, he was suspended by Blizzard for accusing him of buying online gold. He lost every thing on all his characters across the different servers. Hacker also stole everything from our guild bank. And the hacker used his account to purchase online gold, and my friend paid the price of being suspended by Blizzard. But everything was all sorted out now. And just 2 weeks ago, he said he received a suspicious email from Blizzard that it looks like, asking him to change his log in account that they provided in the email. Sure enough, 2 days later, the hacker strikes again! Lost everything again, and currently still waiting on Blizzard to fix the problem.

This happened to a real life friend of ours. He google it for WoW armory site, and the site asked him to enter his account name and password. He thought to himself briefly that he doesn't recall armory site having to ask for account info before, but it was late and he was tired so he gave out the info. And so he lost everything the next day, and the hacker also transferred his character to another server and made my friend paid for the transfer. So not only they message you in game try to scam you, their fake Blizzard sites will also show up if you google the search. Be very careful of what you search for and where you go! The legit WoW site is Worldofwarcraft.com. Or you can go to your log in screen where it says "Community" site and the link will take you to the actual WoW site.

I hear horror stories like these a lot through out the 5 years that I've play WoW, I can go on and on about each players that I know who got hacked, but I think you got the idea of what will happen if you get scammed by these hackers. So please beware of them. Again, Blizzard will NEVER EVER message you in game, and report these messages to Blizzard if you get one. And DO NOT go visit their site!! Play safe and have fun now on WoW!!