'Guild Wars 2' phishing attempts continue

ArenaNet continues to deal with phishing attempts on their popular massively multiplayer online game, Guild Wars 2.

ArenaNet continues to deal with phishing attempts on their popular massively multiplayer online game, Guild Wars 2.

The president of ArenaNet, Mike O'Brien, spoke to Polygon last week about the measures that the publisher has implemented to increase the security of user accounts, but ArenaNet reiterated the importance of user vigilance today on the official Guild Wars wiki.

"If you don't want your account hacked, don't use the same email address you've used for another game or website," the publisher wrote.

"Hackers have big lists of email addresses and passwords that they've harvested from malware and from security vulnerabilities in other games and websites, and they're systematically testing Guild Wars 2 looking for matching accounts.

"If you see email authentication messages in your inbox asking you to approve a login that you didn't initiate and from someplace you don't recognize, that's a sign that a hacker knows your account name and password, and is only being prevented by the email authentication feature from accessing your account. You should immediately change your password to a new, unique password that you've never used anywhere else."

O'Brien told Polygon that ArenaNet has a big responsbility to keep its players safe and that they "take it very seriously".

Correction: This story initially erroneously reported that more than 11,000 complaints about phishing attempts had been made to ArenaNet, but the company has since said that those email complaints weren't all related to hacking. Some referred to lost emails and other assorted, unrelated issues. The story and its headline have both been updated. We apologize for the error.