Guild Wars 2

I know they are all phishing emails but what is A-net doing to counter them? I can not report them as spam I can not block the Email or any of the normal combats vs the phishing emails since it is coming from A-net themselves.

You tell us to be careful and protect our accounts, what is a-net doing to protect their own Email? This has been going on for weeks and if it was my email hacked I would have fixed it immediately yet noreply@guildwars2.com is still compromised today.

I would like to continue to get the real emails from you all but I know this is an attemt to get everyone to block that email then when our accounts do get hack attempts we will not see them since the emails to warn us will be blocked with the phishing emails.

Please advise

Practically speaking, there isn’t really much they CAN do. People can fake email addresses. If I knew your email address, I could send you an email that claims to be from noreply@guildwars2.com. They weren’t compromised. Anyone can spoof that email address.

Just learn to pay attention to what is and isn’t a valid email. Don’t click links. Go to the web site directly if you need to access your account.

ArenaNet is NOT sending out the phishing emails, nor are their servers. If you look at the email headers you will see the path the email took. It’s not originating at ArenaNet’s servers.

Wizard.6829:

I know they are all phishing emails but what is A-net doing to counter them? I can not report them as spam I can not block the Email or any of the normal combats vs the phishing emails since it is coming from A-net themselves.

You tell us to be careful and protect our accounts, what is a-net doing to protect their own Email? This has been going on for weeks and if it was my email hacked I would have fixed it immediately yet noreply@guildwars2.com is still compromised today.

I would like to continue to get the real emails from you all but I know this is an attemt to get everyone to block that email then when our accounts do get hack attempts we will not see them since the emails to warn us will be blocked with the phishing emails.

Please advise

I don’t think you understand how this works. Anet’s e-mail hasn’t been hacked. RMT/Hackers are sending these e-mails out en mass while spoofing Anet’s e-mail address. What does that mean? E-mails being sent from “hacker@rmt.com” are being made to look like it came from “noreply@guildwars2.com”.

And in the source of the Email you will see the fake email as well as the real one. In the code it will tell you who sent it and where it came from. Which means if you send an email and use a hacked account it can be tracked to you. Granted the most elite of elite hacker can make it hard but never impossible. It may take some steps from their security department but it can be done. The spam ones usually come from things like B1izzard.com or things like that so it can be tracked but if someone is using an exact email they are not registered to use it is fraud and trackable. Btw yes most of the Emails are coming from Korea and can be tracked to the exact location it was sent from.
So no I do not fell like an idiot asking if they are following thru with the the fraud investigation of someone illegally using a registered gw2 email. I was hoping maybe they would respond with what is being done to protect our accounts since getting the emails blocked is step one, account theft is step 2.

If it were that easy to stop Spam companies, it would have been done years ago. Sure you can track the server the spam came from, but you can’t track the person(s) responsible.

They can not do anything about the emails. Again, they can not do anything about the emails.

Let’s assume I am a spammer/phisher (for the record I am NOT, but let’s assume I am). I acquire one of many of the easily accessible email lists floating around the Internet. Let’s assume your email address is in that list.

I send you spam from noreply@guildwars2.com daily. Because I’m a newbie spammer I use my ISP’s email service. If you’re lucky your email provider will stop the spam after a while. After a few days my ISP, if it’s legitimate, will likely block me.

Now I become a smarter spammer. I poke around the Internet and find a freely accessible mail server that anyone can use. To access it, I find a free wi-fi hotspot somewhere so I can’t be traced, or I use a stolen credit card, possibly one that was on that list I acquired earlier. The mail server is not in my country, but that’s irrelevant. Again I send you phishing emails from noreply@guildwars2.com. I still haven’t accessed GW2’s servers. I just pretend I have. ArenaNet still can not stop me from sending you this email as they have zero control over the mail server I’m using.

After a few days or weeks of using this freely accessible mail server, I find out it’s no longer freely available, so I find another one, and the cycle continues.

This goes on and on and on until GW2 shuts down.

People have been getting phishing emails for WoW for several years even though they’ve never played the game. Blizzard can not stop those emails, just as ArenaNet can’t prevent anyone from sending noreply@guildwars2.com emails.

Trying to stop the phishing emails is an exercise in futility. Have you or your family members been getting unwanted postal mail for years? That’s not going to stop, nor is the spam. Best thing ArenaNet can do is educate the players.

Also, the phishing emails are NOT from noreply@guildwars2.com, the header in these emails is just made to appear as though they are, which anyone with the small amount of skill needed to do so can do. ArenaNet’s email has not been hacked, breached or compromised. I hope things are a bit clearer. Remember to always check where mail comes from using any one of the approved methods.