Protect Your Account From /Tell Scam

Most of what I am about to say is pure common sense, but if the word of account scammers is to be trusted, it seems that many, many people are falling for this scam.

In the past several months, you may have been noticing more and more spam in your in-game mailbox or via semi-anonymous tells in game. Usually this is for the (widely ill-reputed) gold-seller Peons4hire.com, though I think I recall getting one or two for BroGame as well (yes, like many die-hard gamers, I have short-term memory loss, lol).

Lately, a new scam has been going around that goes something like this:

1. Scammer does random /who search of players, generally for levels 35-70 – the 60-70s are the most lucrative, but anecdotal evidence suggests players closer to 30s are more gullible (perhaps because the percentage of new players increases the lower you go down in levels).

2. They send you a tell meant to look just like a Peons4Hire spam, but the message usually involves you getting something for free. As in, “You have been selected at random to receive a free gift. Please respond to this tell if you would like 1) 500 free gold 2) power-leveling to XX 3) free epic mount 4) None. Please respond in 45 seconds, this is an automatically generated message.”

3. If you respond to this you will then receive an “auto-generated message” informing you that you will receive an in-game mail with more instructions. It will look something like this:

Hello (name),
This is your confirmation e-mail. Our automated source has indicated that you chose to redeem our free package (1 2 or 3). To ensure the quickest service to our customers we ask that you please fill out our information packet in the following form.

1. Character name
2. Realm
3. Account ID
4. Account Password
5. Your e-mail so we may contact you when finished

That was taken directly from the person who may or may not have originated this scam, so you can expect it to look almost identical.

4. After you send them your information you will have a reponse either by in-game mail or your supplied e-mail to not log into your account for a short time in order for the company to deliver your free prize.

And what a free prize it is! The next time you log in instead of seeing your new uber-l33t flying epic mount, you will either find: 1) your character(s) stripped naked of items and gold, or 2) you can’t log in at all because your account has been H4XxD!

I would expect to see more behavior like this in the future. It’s hard for Blizzard to track because the scammer is either using a free trial account or a legitimate account they scammed – either way banning the offending account does not work. I’ve also seen pre-designed macros distributed for this scam and of course the logical next step is to see addon-style lua scripts, possibly modifications of the scripts Peons4hire use. Also note that at this time, because of brand-recognition and because Peons4hire is widely loathed in the first place, you will likely see that name in the scam.

The best way to protect your account from scams like this is to do as Blizzard recommends:

NEVER GIVE YOUR ID OR PASSWORD TO ANYONE FOR ANY REASON!