Starcraft 2 Beta Scam

October 5th, 2009

Following the recent controversy surrounding the World of Warcraft Cataclysm beta scam, other ugly scams are emerging around the soon-to-be released Starcraft 2 beta.

Phishing sites have taken advantage of the anticipation around the game’s release, and have exploited the eagerness of fans that are constantly on the lookout for hints about the upcoming SC2 beta. These phishing perpetrators are using a wide network of sites, including YouTube, MySpace, Twitter and various blogging networks, and offering fake Starcraft 2 beta keys and in some cases even a fake downloadable Starcraft 2 beta.

This Starcraft 2 beta scam has already tricked hoards of Starcraft fans all over the world. All of it is a hoax though; shortly after you visit one of these phishing sites, your computer will become infected with unwanted programs such as keyloggers or trojans.

One of the most popular scams has seen Blizzard supposedly announcing that they are giving away Starcraft 2 beta keys to people using the hash tag “#SC2Fan”, on the social networking site Twitter. This scam was enabled by the Blizzard bosses’ rules that state “All Sweepstakes winners will be notified via Twitter.com’s “direct message” system with instructions for claiming their respective prizes.”

Another widespread Starcraft 2 beta scam involved a spam e-mail that was sent to people at random, that appeared to be from Blizzard Entertainment. It stated that the recipient had been selected for the Starcraft 2 beta, but in fact, the message had been sent by one of the phishing sites. It is actually quite simple for these scammers to make it seem as though these e-mails are really from noreply@blizzard.com. The bad grammar should signal a red flag to recipients about the source of the message. Examples of the different kinds of phishing e-mails are also accessible on the net for Starcraft fans who don’t want to be on the losing end of these Starcraft 2 beta scams.

Blizzard Entertainment is warning fans not to fall for these con artists. Public Relations Manager Bob Colayco has echoed this message, saying that they can confirm that no invites have been sent yet for Starcraft 2 beta, and that they haven’t yet begun sign-ups for the trial version of the game at all

Just to play it safe, we recommend that you sign up for the Starcraft 2 beta directly at Battle.net, and wait for your beta key to be issued. All we wonder is – when will the Starcraft 2 beta FINALLY start?!