Can anybody vouch for these gibberish-named forum members?

I notice from the Forums Memberlist sorted by 'Registered' date that over the past several weeks (starting around late November) there have been plenty of people registering for the ECTOs Community forums with just straight-out gibberish usernames. I've noticed a similar pattern which suggests it's linked to some common source. All/almost all of these user accounts have never actually viewed the forums past the initial registration (Visits: 0) and they have mashed keys for their IGN profile.

I am worried that these are merely phishers looking for Guild Wars account information that they can exploit. The ECTOs Community forums are ranked really high on Google Search so this site is easy to find, especially as it's in a sea of gold-and-ecto seller sites. I am suspicious because most of these forums can be viewed as a guest (meaning you don't need to register if you just want to read the forums) but viewing user profiles require a registered account. It's also possible that these accounts, if they are indeed phishing accounts, could be used to spam your PM inboxes and try and exploit you that way as well with malicious links.


If nobody who is in ECTOs can vouch for any of these as being legit guild/community members I'm going to have no choice but to delete their user accounts and turn on email validation for forum registrations for at least the next several weeks. I have to take all measures to avoid anybody's account info (even character names) being left out in the open, even if it is unlikely that anyone could piece together enough account info here to hack anyone. A random occurrence here and there isn't anything to get too alarmed about, but as you'll see there are a LOT of gibberish accounts recently registered here. It's a warning sign of something ominous, IMO.



As a reminder, PLEASE DON'T USE THE SAME EMAIL ADDRESS TO REGISTER FOR THESE FORUMS THAT YOU USE FOR YOUR ACTUAL GUILD WARS ACCOUNT LOGIN INFO. It is easy enough to get another GMail or Hotmail email account if you need something for forums, etc.




Here is the list of usernames I suspect:

wearsawi
woxiangchif
Amesquieto
jefferip
haoguoa
yueerzhenmei
wichicki
meimengcheng
Goodfriend
shuijiaoa
euseioug
dijiutainch
buzhidaoa
Hooks
viobphard
banchenyans
haoleia
xuyuanxinr
Manuallyn
Patsysaxto
yiewisoamq
xiayulo
Denissehem
Heiler
leroypfeis
valeriabelak
woaixiaoqi
Colinmacke
holiersob
woaidigua
Harlonghini
watler



See how suspicious and "spammy" they look? This many (false?) accounts in a little over a month's worth of time isn't a good sign. Does anyone recognize any of these as people who have come and gone through ECTOs the guild itself over the past few weeks? If not, time to act.

None of these names ring a bell.

None of them ring a bell here either.

I think I'm going to take care of this within the next day or so. If anybody on the above list is legit, they can just re-register using a valid email (once I change that setting)... and, you know, actually visit the forums they registered for.

Registrations have been set to validation by email instead of automatic and the above list of forum accounts have all been deleted.


A funny thing I noticed while looking at each one of their profiles: Every one of these forum accounts but the last one, watler (which was actually the earliest-registered member on this list as I went backwards) was registered with an email address that ended in "ovi.com", which a Google search tells me is a Nokia mobile phone free email service. The earliest member on this list, watler, registered under an email address that ended in "sina.cn" which is a Chinese mobile phone email service. (The .cn is a dead giveaway of it being Chinese.)


Hmmmmm... A rush of registered forum accounts from the same suffix mobile phone email service after one forum account registers from a Chinese mobile phone email service. I think I'm on the money with this one. Seems very suspicious of a long-term Chinese hacking/phishing/spamming attempt with an attempt to cover-up the original .cn email with globalized ovi.com email addresses instead. If it had simply been a bunch of Chinese players interested in the guild/community, most likely their usernames would've made more sense than outright gibberish and they probably would've all registered in an even shorter timeframe than a 5-week span.

But one of them is called 'Goodfriend' good friend. He MUST be legit, I mean, he's a good friend!

Invasion of Chinese hackzorz, account sellers and gold bots... D:

What about names such as: Blood, Link, Peter, Saru ...very suspicious if you ask me.

And here we go again...



Runion -- registered on 2011-01-17 with a gibberish character name and an *.ovi.com email address

jiaohaoten -- registered today with a gibberish username, gibberish character name, and an *.ovi.com email address

figures

youshangban -- registered today with a gibberish username, gibberish character name, and an *.ovi.com email address