There is No WotLK Beta Yet!

[Maticus]

Those of us who look at these forums every day are used to thread after thread popping up claiming to link to WotLK beta testing sites, or sites that prompt you to download something which may contain keyloggers. A lot of us here can spot a dodgy thread the minute it's created, and sometimes we even doubt genuine ones, because we're so used to scammers spamming the forums.

In the run up to Wrath of the Lich King, there are more opportunities for scam artists to con innocent forum users. Occasionally a thread will go unnoticed for a time and those of you who may not be completely in the know about such things may be tempted to follow a link that claims to lead to a beta site, or in some way asks for your WoW account details.

Just to clarify how things are currently:

There is no Wrath of the Lich King Beta.
Do not click on a link that claims to lead to a beta, it is a scam site, and you will most likely loose your account.

Sometimes, the link typed in the thread can be completely different to where you will be taken, for example:

www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/beta (http://www.weconpeople.com)

The link above claims to be going to the official WoW site, but if you check the destination page, it's something different. Before clicking on any link that you may be unsure about, check the link written on the page matches the web address of the destination page. You can do this by right clicking the link and selecting Properties. This shows the destination page.

Some scam sites use web addresses very similar to genuine sites to fool people into thinking the site they are going to is real, be very careful when checking the address, it may have an extra letter or number in the address, hence a fake site.

As well as the beta scam sites, please be aware of continuing attempts to gain account details. Never enter your account login name and password anywhere unless you are 100% certain you are on a genuine site.

We have left a couple of scamming threads open (with all false links removed) to demonstrate the lengths scammers will go to to steal account details.

As soon as Wrath of the Lich King beta is available, we will announce it in the news section, along with an official announcement from Blizzard. According to all the information so far, the beta is still a long way off.

For more information, see the thread (http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=1155755567&sid=1) Blizzard have started about this problem.

[Kalos]

Protecting yourself from Phishers

The biggest and most powerful weapon against phishing is awareness. However, you should also have several good security measures in place to use to defend yourself. A list of good defensive programs are available on the Technical Forum, the sticky itself is linked here: http://wow.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4053975#post4053975

There is also another important sticky on Account Saftey in general here: http://wow.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3925590

How to spot Phishing links:

Scammers commonly use images to convince users that s/he is speaking the truth and to back up thier post. It would be great if we could tell wich images were proper real captures, and which had been run through professional image enhancement tools in order to create an apparently real screenshot.

This was a real image that a scammer used to try and make his post look legitimate:
http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/9913/uploadbn6.jpg
Now I will teach you a rough method to detect if the picture in question has been manipulated or faked using Photoshop.

The Method

Open the link, right click the picture, and save the picture to your computer, anywhere as long as you know where it is.

Find the image file and right click it, go onto the "Open with" menu and select "Choose Program". Scroll down the list and select "Notepad", and hit "Open".

You should see Notepad open up with hundreds of lines of gibberish code. Go to the "Edit" menu in the top bar and select "Find". Type in the word "Photoshop" and hit "Next". If it gets a hit, you know the image is manipulated, and as such is a complete fake. There is little to no legimate reason to use photoshop for simple screen captures, but the tool is commonly used to create realistic fakes, with specialist tools to twist and rework an image to the user's will, perfect for a scammer who wants a spotless appearence.

There you have it. A basic method to detect if a picture has been tampered with. Try it with the above, then try it with any other image. You'll see a recurring pattern between the codes for photoshopped and none-photoshopped images.

Photoshop is a legitimate program, and it's presence might be legitimate. A photoshow watermark in the coding isn't a sentence of certain fraud. However, when you're already suspecting a user of being dishonest, it's one more nail in the coffin, and a strong additional reason not to trust them, especially if the image is being employed as some form of proof or reason to trust what they are saying. As you can see from the above, it looks frigheningly real, but it is an obvious fraud, few people use Photoshop for simple image processing, especially when they're trying to provide 'proof' of something.