Lately I’ve been getting a lot of emails from people claiming to be Blizzard wanting me to verify my account information. While most of these emails are more than obvious fakes, some are well made and appear to be legitimate Blizzard emails. In this article I will be providing tips that will help you identify fraudulent emails from real ones. I will be referring mostly to Blizzard throughout this article, however, 99% of game companies have these same rules in place.

The first tip is the most obvious. Blizzard will never send you an email asking you to verify your account information. The only time they do this is when you call them seeking help with your account. A Blizzard employee will NEVER ask for your password. This being said, all emails you receive asking you to verify your account information, are fake.

The second tip is to look at the header information of the email. Sometimes you will see a legitimate @blizzard.com email in the "from" field. This is easily faked and upon further inspection, you will notice that most of these emails are sent from a hotmail account. All emails display their original source in the headers of the email. In Windows Mail or Outlook Express you can right click on the email and select "Properties". In the properties window click on the "Details" tab. The first thing you will notice is a "return-path" field with the true email address of the sender listed there. While there are ways to fake this information, it should be the first place to look for fraudulent data.

The third step is to look at the web address in the email. Most of these emails want you to visit the "blizzard website" and will even display a link with the text to blizzard.com. However, if you mouse over the link and look at the bottom left corner of your internet browser or email client (in the status area) you will see the true link you will be going to. Pay close attention to the spelling, as many of these scam artists use names such as bl1zzard.com (notice the 1 instead of the i). Should this link not actually be pointing to http://www.worldofwarcraft.com, then it is a fake. Always carefully verify the web link (even ones that look like worldofwarcraft.com) is not a fake.

Sometimes game companies do contact their customers via email. This is common practice. However, the safest method of all to ensure your account safety is to call the company or send an email from the game website itself using the "contact" page. This will guarantee you are dealing with the company and not a scam artist. Other things to look out for are game mods. Many mods can contain malicious code which will act as a prying eye (a keylogger) to watch you type in your account name and password, and report that information back to the mod writer. Never use an executable mod without verifying its authenticity by performing a google search for the mod’s name.

Another, more invasive method of getting your account information is to create an in game character name that resembles a GM (a game company employee). Most games, have a specific color set aside for dealings with GM’s, so let that be the first thing you look for as a sign of a scam. Also, pay close attention to the character name. If you are familiar with the GM’s name syntax, you can compare that to the person messaging you to determine if it is real or not. You can also have them verify a bit of your account information to you to make certain it is legit.

The method I use most is a simple rule: "If I didn’t ask to be contacted then you must be fake." Based on this simple rule, I ignore would-be GM’s who message me in game. Being an honest player I have no reason to be contacted by a GM. And if I feel certain it is a GM then I will request them to call me on the phone to speak with me, as I do not trust their authenticity. In the two times of my five years of playing, the GM has complied proving both times, they were legitimate.

Scammers are always coming up with new methods to try to steal account information from players. A little bit of common sense and a bit of an untrusting nature is all it takes to avoid them. Using the methods I have mentioned here, I have never been scammed, and my account has never been stolen.