Scamwatch : Fake Armory Pages

[Bluspacecow]

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 TLR 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 ?