Scamwatch : Fake Armory Pages
 

I've logged off game temporarily to post this as I feel it's pretty important.

It's about the latest scam gold sellers are using to compromise your account. What they are doing is capitalizing on people clamoring to try the latest thing from Blizzard without being fully aware of the consequences. The new latest thing is the Armory has some new features on it : A 3D character model viewer as well as RSS feeds.

For the TL:DR peoples in the crowd I'm just going to go ahead and skip to the meat of this post (and put it in 24 pt text if I can)

DO NOT GOOGLE FOR THE NEW ARMORY. GO TO THE WORLDOFWARCRAFT.COM SITE AND CLICK THE LINK FOR THE ARMORY UP THE TOP LEFT OF THAT WEB PAGE.


Ok still with me ?

Right the latest trick the gold sellers are now using is to pay for ad space on google point to their fake armory site. At this fake armory site they will ask you to put in your username and password.

In the words of Admiral Ackbar - "IT'S A TRAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

First of all you only need to login into the Armory when looking at the Guild Bank or saving new poses. There's some other features you need to login for but the two I've named here are the main ones.

That right off should be ringing alarm bells for you when you find yourself at a supicious armory site - the fact that it's asking for your username and password before it allows you to look anyway up.

There is a vast amount of information you can look up on the Armory about any given character , guild or item without having to login.

Secondly there's 2 really quick ways to get to the Armory that won't potentially get your account hacked.

1) Go to www.worldofwarcraft.com . This site is definitely owned by Blizzard so no worries there.

Up the top right hand side of that page will be a Armory link

2) Go to the world of warcraft forums at forums.worldofwarcraft.com

Open any forum there.

Open any post.

Click on any Poster's character name.

Lastly if you already have a Battle.net auth cookie then the Armory will use that to login.

You might have one of these if you've logged into the forums recently. This is what it is using when you are not logged into the forums and you click the login button and it just logs you in without asking for your username and password.

It will use this to log you into the Armory - instantly and without having to ask you for your Battle.net username and password.

Of course if this cookie has expired you may need to login - make sure it's taking you to a https://us.battle.net address.

Which again you shouldn't need to do to use 75% of the Armory. If the site asks you to login as soon as you get to it Run! because "IT'S A TRAP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Kk The sun's coming up so time to get to bed. O_O Don't run away bed ... come back !!! /sob

PS Can someone post an Ackbar please ?

PPS Not sure how big this scam is going to be. Might want to consider a front pages news item maybe ?

Even easier, the only official Armory is at http://www.wowarmory.com. Any other URL will be a fake. A Google of new armory could return either results as Blizz did add those features.

More worrisome is the sneaky emails I've gotten lately in my spam box. They are a direct cut & paste of actual Blizz "Somone has made changes to your account, if this isn't you click here"-style email. The links appear to be proper until you look at the actual URL, which is close, but just leads to keyloggers and such. They are getting craftier, I almost clicked on one. :o

Done and done!

Well that's just the thing.

What if the user can't spell armory with the american spelling ?

I personally misspell a lot of words. I spell "usual" "usaul" , "complaint" "compliant" and "armory" "armoury"

I do believe "Armory" is the american spelling of the word.

Bookmarks won't always work either as you are not always at your own computer when checking the Armory.

TY Landrell :)

Just wanted to high light this again =

There is only 3 or 4 places you need to login for - the guild bank , the calender and for saving your poses,

All of these are clearly marked with a Lock symbol. There is also a login key thingy up the top right.

Logging in is completely user initiated. You should not be presented with a login just to look stuff up - 95% of the Armory can be used without having to login .

If it asks you to login right off the bat - RUN FORREST RUN !

For those of us on "the othe side of the pond", the EU armory is at:

http://eu.wowarmory.com

Or goto the EU WoW page: http://www.wow-europe.com and then click the Armory link in the link bar at the top of the page. Whenever you see a link in any form, mouse over the link and look in your browser's Status Bar (the bar at the bottom of your Browser window. The real URL will be located there. If you don't see your browser's status bar, enable it (usually through the "View" menu). If in doubt, manually type the Armory's URL in your Location Bar. If you immediately get a log-in screen, well, your inner Admiral Ackbar should be doing his thing!

In addition, Blizzard always uses the American version of English for written English.

I have gotten several of those fake (aka the copy and paste from an official Blizzard email) phishing email. However I have to laugh as either those emails are coming on my old (and getting well spammed) email account of which I originally used to sign up for WoW, or email accounts of which I have never associated with WoW. I know my account is not in trouble with Blizzard as it has been frozen for several months due to a distinct lack of Euros to buy game time with. My poor Druid must have quite a nice layer of dust on him by now unless the Dalaran Department of Public Works hoses him down every so often.

Even better are the Aion phish spam I have started receiving. They are so bad and the kicker is that I have never had an Aion account.

Also

If you click someone's name on any post they've made on the official forums it takes you to their Armory Page.

Official forums, eww. I try to stay out of that wretched hive of filth and villainy as much as possible. Dealing with the trolls there is like dealing with a horde of zombies armed only with a shotgun and a pocketful of shotgun shells. They just keep coming...