DO NOT USE ANY OF THE LINKS IN THIS REPLY
I also got a phishing E-Mail today. When I received the E-Mail I first looked for the common images ArenaNet uses in their E-Mails (logo, quaggans, etc…), as you can see there aren’t any. It appears as if the E-Mail is actually real, I almost fell for it, but the strangest thing about the E-Mail is that it went into the spam inbox, which is odd, as I have ArenaNet marked as VIP on my phone (it goes to a separate inbox), and most other E-Mails I get from ArenaNet go straight to junk if they are not about my account. interestingly enough, G-Mail seems to be able to tell if it’s a bogus E-Mail thanks to reports from other users, it didn’t actually let me click the link in the E-Mail. Next, I un-blocked it and proceeded to check the hidden link, it gave me the following link:
http://account.guildwars.com.40a37-34ea66-4addee-b38ec-f3116adce4f1.tk/
Notice the .tk at the end of the link. The .tk is the real domain system in the address, not the .com you can see before, notice there is also no forward slashes after the .com, .tk are usually for free domain names.
Also, after seeing the link, I took the link and ran it on my phone’s browser, and fair enough it did show a believable website layout, so I proceeded to enter bogus information, at the serial number for example I wrote “123456789”, which is more than unlikely to be an actual serial number, in combination with fake E-Mails and password. surely, the website did in fact accept it, and then took me to a login website (which seems to be GuidWars 2’s website apparently…). If you entered fake/incorrect information, you should get an error asking to contact support.
While it seems these phishing E-Mails are more and more thought-out, there’s always going to be a clue that will -at least- make you suspicious. I also think that -IF ArenaNet wanted to block your account, it would alert you in other ways, such as in-game mail or messages and perhaps other ways too. -IF- you DO want to see the link for yourself grab your mobile device (these are essentially malware-free even if the link DOES have malware) and enter there, and DO NOT enter ANY valid information (no E-Mail, no password, no serial # (use something like “123456789” or even “10”)).
Check the attachments for images of the actual E-Mail and the way the website is supposed to handle invalid information.
TIP: If you want to post a link BUT don’t want it to be clickable, just mark it as a code by using
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and
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and typing what you want to be link-free in between them (this works for most linkable things, including actual code in the forum).
