I got an email this morning before i headed to college saying that wow account password had been changed, well guess what i didnt change it in fact i havnt played since early septemeber and my account is inactive.  I merged my account with battle.net months ago and it worked fine when i logged in.

When i did try to login today i tried evey password combination i can remember and no luck. I tried to reset my password and it wont let me so it seems my account is either hacked or its something else.

Heres the email i got;

Hello xxx,

This is an automated notification regarding the recent change(s) made to your Battle.net account: [email protected]

Your password has recently been modified through the Account Management website.

*** If you made this password change, please disregard this notification.

However, if you did NOT make any changes to your password, we recommend you contact Blizzard Billing & Account Services for assistance keeping your account as secure as possible.

For more information, click here for answers to Frequently Asked Questions or to contact the Blizzard Billing & Account Services team.

Account security is solely the responsibility of the accountholder. Please be advised that in the event of a compromised account, Blizzard representatives typically must lock the account. In these cases the Account Administration team will require faxed receipt of ID materials before releasing the account for play.

Sincerely,
The Battle.net Account Team
Online Privacy Policy

The email looks real with the email headers looking correct. Unfortunetly the information you need to fill out to even get help with this from Blizzard support is insane, you need the original game CD key and all sorts off other stuff which i didnt have time to get this morning.

The email header;

Received: from ew1-web-10-blade02.wowadmin.net (ew1-web-10-blade02.wowadmin.net [10.50.53.42])

by smtp06.eu.worldofwarcraft.com (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id nAA6Odc5027774

for <myemail>; Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:24:40 GMT

Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:24:39 GMT

Message-ID: <29437094.1257834279963.JavaMail.tomcat@ew1-admin-smtp-vip.wowadmin.net>

From: Blizzard Entertainment <[email protected]>

It seems my account has been hacked after all as Blizzard have sent this email to me;

Greetings,

We are writing to inform you that we have, unfortunately, had to cancel your World of Warcraft account:

Account Name: ********
Type of Violation: Involvement in online trading activities
Investigation Concluded: 10/11/2009
Consequences for Account: Account Cancellation

It is with regret that we take this type of action, however, it is in the best interest of the World of Warcraft community as a whole, and for the integrity of the game, that your access to the World of Warcraft servers be cancelled.

Online trading refers to the exchange of in-game content for real world money, and includes, but is not limited to, the sale or purchase of gold, the sale or purchase of experience in the form of powerlevelling, and the sale or purchase of honor points, reputation or items.

Account access is the responsibility of the account owner and account sharing is against our Terms of Use (http://www.wow-europe.com/en/legal/termsofuse.html). Therefore, should you believe someone other than yourself (the account owner) has committed this violation of the Terms of Use with your account, these sanctions would still apply, as our action is taken against the account, not the individual.

If you wish to review our current Rules and Polices, they can be found at:
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/policy/

Regards,

Account Administration Team
Blizzard Entertainment Europe

Edit Update 13-nov-09:

I still dont know how i was hacked as ive all windows updates, Anti virus and a firewall. Avast said my Windows installation was clean, so did Spybot Search and Destroy. Howeve Lavasofts Adaware came up with a load of different viruses but didnt tell where they were. So in order to be sure i changed passwords to all my email accounts.

Ever since i was aware that Wow accounts would be hacked and cleaned out like this ive been very aware of my wow password and had Anti-Virus and firewall software installed. Bu i never thought this would matter if your wernt playing anymore. Since my account was inactive i dont know how it was hacked and im stilll waiting on Blizzard to contact me. I cant get even get though to them by using there UK number when they have an office in ireland in cork, so thats bloody great.

Edit: 20 – Nov Source of Virus Found – my College
Im after putting in the memory stick that i use for college in the DKIT and my new Anti Virus ESET Security (AVAST didnt even detect it) has picked up the virus on it something called;

“N:\9g86.exe – Win32/PSW.OnLineGames.NNU trojan”

So its clear even from the name that this is the nasty bastard virus that let somebody hack my account, whats even worse is that weeks ago at college the Anti-virus up there reported that some file on the memory stick had a virus but it didnt remove it and i thought nothing of it. Window then must have run the file when i put the Memory stick in. Ill never use Avast Anti-virus again even though ive used it for 5 years.