Tag: Spam

I started playing World of Warcraft again several months ago (and quit again after playing for a month and a half), and unfortunately I had to contact support over the phone to get some assistance. I found that, even at off-peak hours, the support queue was full enough that it required me to call back for almost a half hour just to get into the line to wait to get support for account assistance. Looking on the forums, I saw a similar glut of people looking for assistance with stolen accounts, unauthorized authenticators, etc.

Then one day I stumbled on to my spam folder, and realized something shocking and somewhat confusing: I receive more Battle.Net account spam than I do Viagra (or V!aGrA as they call it) and other medication spam, and frankly I’m no longer surprised that as many people are having their accounts stolen.

Oddly enough, spammers use the same technique that is commonly found in free to play Asian grinders, where the spam message is sent to millions upon millions of people with the knowledge that the small amount of people stupid enough to say “you mean I can get off-brand Tylenol at half the price of my local pharmacy and double the effectiveness?” will more than make up for the fact that 99.9999% will either not see it or immediately delete it. Essentially, if you’re trying to get a quarter into a cup from ten paces, taking a handful of quarters and throwing them at the cup drastically increases your chances of at least one getting in, as opposed to tossing each quarter one by one.

So don’t feel too bad, Warcraft’ers. If ten thousand of you lose your account this year to this type of email, that’s still only .08% of the game’s population, around the same lines as the 99.9% no-response rate that regular spam receives.

Actually, whenever I write an article on World of Warcraft here, spam bots swarm like pathetic little parasites. “Oh hey, Blizzard is letting me know via third party blog that my battle.net account is locked, I’d better click on this link, it’s safe.”