E-mail Addresses Scraped
Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 2:51 pm
All of my websites, including these forums, are hosted on the same physical server. Although this isn't shared hosting in the normal sense, we do share the server with a few other websites. Recently, one of those other sites was hacked.
My sites escaped relatively unscathed, with one unfortunate exception: the hacker managed to scrape the e-mail addresses from the account information in the database. This affects the accounts on the Petopia Community forums, Warcraft Mounts, and WoW Tabards.
What this means for you: You may start getting spam and phishing (fraudulent scam) e-mails on the e-mail address that is associated with your account.
What it doesn't mean: Passwords are stored in an encrypted form, so you don't need to worry about someone logging into your website account directly.
What you should do: Be aware that you may be getting phishing e-mails. Be extra vigilant about any e-mails that you get and extra careful about clicking on links. If you follow a link in a phishing e-mail to a fake site and login, you can expose your WoW account information and your account may be hacked.
You have my utmost apologies for this. I know how irritating and frustrating it is to get spam, especially phishing e-mails. I am deeply chagrined that my sites have exposed any of your information, even if it wasn't my sites directly at fault.
All of the other sites on our server have been secured and this shouldn't happen again. But the internet is a wild and nasty place sometimes. My best advice is to use one e-mail address for community sites like mine and another, completely unique e-mail address for your WoW account. You can create a free e-mail address through Google GMail.
My sites escaped relatively unscathed, with one unfortunate exception: the hacker managed to scrape the e-mail addresses from the account information in the database. This affects the accounts on the Petopia Community forums, Warcraft Mounts, and WoW Tabards.
What this means for you: You may start getting spam and phishing (fraudulent scam) e-mails on the e-mail address that is associated with your account.
What it doesn't mean: Passwords are stored in an encrypted form, so you don't need to worry about someone logging into your website account directly.
What you should do: Be aware that you may be getting phishing e-mails. Be extra vigilant about any e-mails that you get and extra careful about clicking on links. If you follow a link in a phishing e-mail to a fake site and login, you can expose your WoW account information and your account may be hacked.
You have my utmost apologies for this. I know how irritating and frustrating it is to get spam, especially phishing e-mails. I am deeply chagrined that my sites have exposed any of your information, even if it wasn't my sites directly at fault.
All of the other sites on our server have been secured and this shouldn't happen again. But the internet is a wild and nasty place sometimes. My best advice is to use one e-mail address for community sites like mine and another, completely unique e-mail address for your WoW account. You can create a free e-mail address through Google GMail.
