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"Suspicious Activity" -- not a phish.
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Post by
seebs
So, for reasons irrelevant to this thread (no interest in discussing them, either), I found it advisable to ask Blizzard to nuke my old WoW account completely. That is to say, write to privacy@ asking them to delete all my personal information. Obviously, if this is done, there is no longer any way to use, activate, or reclaim the account; it's
gone
.
So today I got a "suspicious activity" email to my battle.net address. Being a proper paranoid, I had of course used a completely unique address with battle.net, which has never been used elsewhere. This is already sort of odd; no one but Blizzard should have that address. I went and looked at the headers. Yes, I actually got it from a machine which is part of battle.net. All the links in it are genuine links to Blizzard sites, not obfuscated ones. It does not ask for any name or password.
In short, my account has apparently been locked for "suspicious activity". Now, this is a bit of an odd coincidence, isn't it? I haven't had WoW installed on any machine for a couple of months. I haven't logged into ANY part of Blizzard's stuff since November. My account still had an authenticator on it, last time I used it.
So, I guess the question is this: Does anyone know whether this would be a normal side-effect of account deletion? If it's not, there sure is an amazing coincidence in that mere days after I asked them to nuke the account, it suddenly got attacked. Keep in mind, the machine on which I actually played WoW last time I played isn't even physically together anymore, and I don't think it's even been capable of being powered on since probably September or so. There's nothing out there which ought to even have my account name recorded on it... And in theory, if what Blizzard said in response to my previous email was correct, they shouldn't even
have
that email address anymore!
Post by
292411
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
127599
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
seebs
This isn't spam, it's actual mail from Blizzard -- I checked the headers out more carefully, looked up hosts, cross-checked with Blizzard's DNS, etcetera. Again, this is an address which is
unique
to battle.net. Never used anywhere else for any reason, not configured or written down or anything. There's not even a specific entry for it on the mail server, it's just picked up by a catch-all rule. This is not an address that anyone other than Blizzard could use.
This suggests strongly that there really was "suspicious activity" on the account. So the question is... Why is there suddenly suspicious activity on this account now? There apparently wasn't in the previous months. Since there's nothing on any of my computers that would make this address available to a hypothetical keylogger or such, there's no way for someone to have gotten started on this account now... unless they got the login/email address from Blizzard.
What worries me is that someone at Blizzard might have realized that accounts that are in the nuking process are unlikely to be monitored by their owners, and thus could be sold off to gold spammers, or something like that. (Obviously, not an official or sanctioned policy, just Some Guy With Database Access). But alternatively, maybe they just always send one of those while nuking an account, or something like that. I dunno. I thought maybe someone here would know someone who'd done this (given how many people here have quit WoW at least once) and could comment on whether such an email was a typical part of the process.
Post by
224056
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
seebs
I will eventually. When it came in, it was not a time when I could call Blizzard, so I thought I'd post here on the off chance that someone knew. I'll call Blizzard when I get back from lunch.
Post by
seebs
Ah-hah! Blizzard explains that their automated system for account locking doesn't know
why
an account was locked, so when they lock the account to delete it, the automated system helpfully sends out a message about the lock, which is a single pre-written form letter that does not distinguish between "due to suspicious activity" and "because you asked us to".
(... wtf, recaptcha just handed me Chinese characters which I can't read... Apparently I didn't have to, skipping that word was accepted.)
Post by
DarkOpeth
This isn't spam, it's actual mail from Blizzard -- I checked the headers out more carefully, looked up hosts, cross-checked with Blizzard's DNS, etcetera. Again, this is an address which is
unique
to battle.net. Never used anywhere else for any reason, not configured or written down or anything. There's not even a specific entry for it on the mail server, it's just picked up by a catch-all rule. This is not an address that anyone other than Blizzard could use.
This suggests strongly that there really was "suspicious activity" on the account. So the question is... Why is there suddenly suspicious activity on this account now? There apparently wasn't in the previous months. Since there's nothing on any of my computers that would make this address available to a hypothetical keylogger or such, there's no way for someone to have gotten started on this account now... unless they got the login/email address from Blizzard.
What worries me is that someone at Blizzard might have realized that accounts that are in the nuking process are unlikely to be monitored by their owners, and thus could be sold off to gold spammers, or something like that. (Obviously, not an official or sanctioned policy, just Some Guy With Database Access). But alternatively, maybe they just always send one of those while nuking an account, or something like that. I dunno. I thought maybe someone here would know someone who'd done this (given how many people here have quit WoW at least once) and could comment on whether such an email was a typical part of the process.
A very cynical part of me says that Blizzard is actively, secretly selling unused accounts to gold spammers and hackers, because they can.
Post by
seebs
Heh. I don't think so, yet anyway. Obviously, if I still trusted Blizzard, there would never have been a thread about what happened after I asked them to delete all personal information about me from their systems, though.
Ah, well. I think this marks the functional end of my participation here except in a possible distant future where Blizzard has gotten spun off from Activision again and is back to being run by Blizzard people. Accounts unrecoverably gone, no plans to ever enter into a business relationship with that company... I think that's sorta the end of the line.
Thanks to the wowhead crew for making the game a lot more fun, and providing a great community. I miss you guys a lot, lot, more than I miss Trade. :)
Post by
Strand
As far as I know, Blizzard will not erase an account no matter what. I'm thinking your email may be what may have flagged the account.
Post by
tuckmuck203
(... wtf, recaptcha just handed me Chinese characters which I can't read... Apparently I didn't have to, skipping that word was accepted.)
When I see characters that I can't type on my keyboard, I like to put dirty words in, just in case it works. Then I cqtm.
And by the way, why would blizzard lock an account instead of deleting it? If it's specifically been asked by the account holder to be deleted, why do they lock it and still keep the data on their servers when it costs them money? I know data storage is cheap nowadays, but blizzard is still a business, and this is jsut costing them money.
Post by
626385
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
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