Guild Wars 2

Players report that they receive emails that pretend to come from us with various claims. These are phishing attempts, and we want you to know a few things about them.

We will not send emails that state that your account will be terminated if you do not respond. We will not send emails that state that an account has been compromised (unless we are responding to a player). Emails of this type are almost certainly malicious in intent.

To protect yourself from phishing attempts, please consider the following:

• For matters related to account security, access the official, secure account page by typing account.guildwars2.com. Log in through that page and secure your account.
• To see if a link is suspicious, hover over the URL and carefully review the precise details of the hidden, underlying link in your browser. If the URL in the email is different than the underlying link, DO NOT click the link.
• To be extra secure, type the URL into your browser instead of clicking a risky link. Alternately, you can copy and paste the visible link into your browser. (Take care you do not copy and use the hidden, bad link.)

We suggest you take the following steps to make sure both your game account and your email account are secure:

1. Scan your hard drive for viruses, keyloggers, and any other sort of malware, having made sure that your anti-virus software is up-to-date.
2. Change the password of your game account to a complex password you haven’t used before and that you use only for this game account.
3. Make sure you are using the additional email authentication for your game account. You can find further information here: https://en.support.guildwars2.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/9192/kw/Authenticator
4. Alternatively, you can use two-factor authentication if you own a mobile device. You can find additional information about two-factor authentication here: https://en.support.guildwars2.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/9238/kw/Authenticator
5. Change the password of your email account. You should follow similar rules for choosing your email password that you following in choosing your game account password.
6. If your email provider offers any two-factor authentication or similar options, take advance of those to further strengthen the security of your email account.

Further information about account security can be found in this article: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/tips-for-keeping-your-guild-wars-2-account-secure

And an in-depth look at security can be found in this post by Mike O’Brien: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/mike-obrien-on-account-security/

McBob.5071:

Does ArenaNet not have an address for us to forward phishing emails to? Most online games do, so they can shut down the site as soon as possible.

We do not. We do not have many options for shutting down independent sites that try this sort of shenanigans, and in some cases, they spring up again almost immediately on another host, even in another country. We do pursue misuses of our IP, and this certainly falls into that category, but it’s different than a company using our art for their game, which we have far more success pursuing.

However, you ask a valid question, so I will inquire about whether we want to have such an email address in the future. I can tell you if we did set up a mailbox, it’d be monitored but not answered, due to sheer volume.