Watch Out For StarCraft II Email Scam

Tom Goldman

Crying on the inside.
Aug 17, 2009
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Watch Out For StarCraft II Email Scam



As if it wasn't expected, scammers are already attacking fans of the barely one-week-old StarCraft II.

Blizzard's everybody is saying [http://www.amazon.com/Starcraft-II-Wings-Liberty-Pc/dp/B000ZKA0J6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1280796898&sr=8-1] how it's just the bee's knees. Don't let those feelings of happiness make you let your guard down, as scammers are using the title's hype to try to steal Battle.net accounts and personal information.

This seems to be par for the course every time a super-popular game is released, as it also happened with Siliconera [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/95204-Microsoft-Warns-About-Modern-Warfare-2-Beta-Scam], the new scam involves emails that pretend to be from the Blizzard Store. It attempts to make users believe that they're getting a StarCraft II CD key, but that they must create or log into a Battle.net account at a non-Blizzard location.

The email reads: "To use this key to activate the game, simply follow these instructions: 1. Create a Battle.net account (or if you already have one, log in) at ." It then pretends like you'd be good to go for some Zerg on Terran action, but you really would have just given a scammer your Battle.net account. If an email doesn't come from "@blizzard.com" or "@battle.net," it's not from Blizzard.

We should all know this by now, but when an email tells you something that's too good to be true, like that you just got a free copy of StarCraft II, it is. You wouldn't respond to the guy that keeps emailing you about how you just won the email lottery, would you? Or the foreign national that says he's going to give you $100,000 if you give him $5,000 to release the funds, right? Right? I hope you just said no, twice.

Source: Siliconera [http://www.siliconera.com/2010/08/02/beware-of-this-starcraft-ii-scam/]


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Moriarty

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Apr 29, 2009
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The problem is, the actual email from blizzard i got when being chosen for the starcraft beta looked the same.

Of course, all you need to do is entering the standard bnet webadress manually, instead of clicking on email links.
 

ProfessorLayton

Elite Member
Nov 6, 2008
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But... I... it's Starcraft II for free! I'm sure it wouldn't hurt, right? I can take my chances...
 

Woodsey

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Aug 9, 2009
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Tom Goldman said:
Or the foreign national that says he's going to give you $100,000 if you give him $5,000 to release the funds, right? Right? I hope you just said no, twice.
They said it was from the Nigerian President himself, dammit! I can't just ignore him!
 

talenos

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Dec 12, 2009
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Often, the e-mail will appear to be from blizzard, the most reliable way I've found is that the url will not be correct. I got one for WoW this morning and they had spelled World as Wor1d using the "1" for the lowercase "L"
 

Inconnu24

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Apr 6, 2009
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Fantastic. It's as though Blizzard spamming their official ads everywhere isn't enough.
 

ThreeKneeNick

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Aug 4, 2009
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Funny i'm getting WoW scams, at this moment there are three of them in my spam folder, but no SC scams yet. Also, any excuse to write about SC2...
 

mattaui

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Oct 16, 2008
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Haven't seen any SC2 spam yet, but the most recent WoW spam I got was telling me that my toons had been faction switched. I could tell it wasn't correct, since they weren't using the right battle.net email account, but that's a new twist on things.
 

mad825

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Mar 28, 2010
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soo, being technical this is phishing.

I have not seen any in my Email accounts
 

T_ConX

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Mar 8, 2010
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Anyone dumb enough to fall for these deserves whatever happens to them.
 

Blue Musician

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Mar 23, 2010
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Tom Goldman said:
You wouldn't respond to the guy that keeps emailing you about how you just won the email lottery, would you? Or the foreign national that says he's going to give you $100,000 if you give him $5,000 to release the funds, right? Right? I hope you just said no, twice.
The sad thing is that my grandparents did fall for that, and they gave their money away (yes, I still am an underage). Until now I haven't fall for any scam, but anyways...

OT: Has there been any more SC2 cams? I'd thought there was quite some more since I got quite some of WoW (even though I do not play the game, no Idea how they get here).
 

martin's a madman

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Aug 20, 2008
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On the Metacritic user reviews some guy gave it a 1 out of 10. His post sounded VERY angry. Like, I wonder if Blizzard did something personal to him.