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Guildhead Spam?
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Post by
Worcester
Uh... I'm not sure why, but I'm getting the Guild Wars 2 phishing emails. The reason it concerns me is that I've never played Guild Wars, so I'm not real sure why they got my email, or my Wowhead username. Is there a connection between this site and the hackers/spammers? Just wanted to bring it to someone's attention. Thank you.
Post by
duffry
Likewise, sent to an email address only used on this site from ArenaNet (noreply@guildwars2.com).
Post by
yukonjack
Uh... I'm not sure why, but I'm getting the Guild Wars 2 phishing emails. The reason it concerns me is that I've never played Guild Wars, so I'm not real sure why they got my email, or my Wowhead username. Is there a connection between this site and the hackers/spammers? Just wanted to bring it to someone's attention. Thank you.
Me too, had the same email waiting for me in my inbox this morning.
Edited to add the GW2 spam I recieved was not in my email account that I use soley for wowhead, it was instead in my general purpose email account which I must say recieves all kinds of spam mail from games I have never played.
Post by
Nooska
I doubt very much its related to wowhead in any way.
I recieved 2 emails on this, neitehr address is the one I'm using for wowhead (for me, I use dummy mail names on a domain, and get them all via a catch-all account, so the mailadresses can't be hacked either)
Post by
Ashelia
Our database was compromised several years ago (I think far before my time, 2008?) and that is probably what happened with these particular emails. We posted about it when it happened, so it's never been something we covered up--we try to be pretty transparent about things like this :)
However, if you were registered recently and are still getting these emails, I really encourage people to make their emails more complex for websites--scammers are getting really smart and ruthless. "wowhead@DOMAIN" can be guessed.
Post by
Ashelia
Edit: Whoops, Ashelia got her reply in before me. I'm glad it's in blue text that *something* happened, but "We posted about it when it happened" is definitely not the case.
It was posted about :) I asked my boss (the president of ZAM) before posting this and that's what he told me to say; it was posted years ago back in 2008 when it happened according to him that some emails were leaked. I was not here so I can't really offer any light about it, but I know it was way earlier in Wowhead's history before the site was as big as it is now.
That said, I do think people have a tendency to blame websites and threads about it can do a lot more harm than good. People often blame us for things that couldn't possibly be our fault and threads like this can encourage them to some degree. But if you have an account like "throwaway@domain.com" and you use it for multiple websites, it's very likely that it could be gotten out there. Likewise, if your username is "Ashelia" and your email is "asheliawowhead@hotmail" then that's easily guessed too.
Likewise, games can have vulnerabilities. Trion's RIFT was vulnerable and people could easily hack it on launch, but people felt like blaming fansites for the vulnerability.
If your account wasn't registered over four years ago there are no leaks that could have affected you that I know of, so it's likely there's another source. I really just encourage people to use an email for a website that is never linked to personal accounts because all it takes is a really invasive cookie, a smart person, or other vulnerabilities to have your email out there.
Rest assured, though, if the vulnerability is ever on our end you'll know.(##RESPBREAK##)2##DELIM##Ashelia##DELIM##
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