Phishing scam ongoing since christmas

[Ravenblade1979]

Well folks since square has done nothing to inform anyone of this. Since christmas of last year there has been a ongoing phishing scam. At first they disguised it as entering a draw for 700 mil gil. All you had to do was goto the youtube video and follow the link. The link took you to a clone of lodestone prompting you to login which went nowhere.

What you basically just did was give them your login information. After a bit this disappeared. Then the phishers came back with a new one. It says that square shouldnt ruin the game at this time by updating and points you to a website that's the same exact clone of lodestone designed to do the same thing. Get your details.

Now you might think stupid players. Yes while they should be more careful, lots still fall for it. I keep reporting the PM sent to me to the gms but the same response and nothing happening. Lately I'm afraid to say this has started to effect free companies as well. Some of the jacked accounts were officers who had access to fc chest.

I have a friend who found out her account was being played on someones ps4 in another country. Thankfully she got it back. Since no one is calling attention to this I figure I should. So people are warned about this and warn others. They try to use a website disguised as a official square enix one but you can easily spot it's a fake. Here is the recent site they use.

forum.squareenix.com-na.pw/ffxiv/threads/417225

Alot have fallen for this link because they dont read after the .com where it has -letters.pw.

Please spread awareness because lots of paying customers have fallen for this and nothing but silence has come from square nor has anything been put in place to enhance security. I suggest you and your friends start using one time password to protect your account so you dont lose all that work too.

[Joven]

They've warned about bogus links through Twitch and other platforms on both the launcher and Lodestone.

[Ravenblade1979]

You expect too much out of the playerbase to click on that on lodestone then the link inside that warning that takes you to the information players legit need to know

[Joven]

You expect too much out of the playerbase to click on that on lodestone then the link inside that warning that takes you to the information players legit need to know

I do. It's not Square-Enix's responsibility to make sure people don't get scammed. The fact they had any warnings at all is surprising. People need to take responsibility for their own information safety.

[Rongway]

Alot have fallen for this link because they dont read after the .com where it has -letters.pw.

It's reasonable to expect people to check URLs before entering login credentials, no matter what they're logging in to. This isn't a SE or FF problem; it's a basic internet usage problem. People should be taught this before they're allowed to internet.

You expect too much out of the playerbase to click on that on lodestone then the link inside that warning that takes you to the information players legit need to know

Announcements are linked in the launcher when you log in. They put them somewhere that everyone must visit before playing the game; it's not SE's fault if people don't read it.



PS, you posted this in the localization forum. This is for textual errors, mistranslations, and awkward wordings of in-game text and audio. Besides being the wrong forum for this, it gets much less traffic than other forums. If you want to warn people about phishing scams you should head over to General discussion.

[Caitlinzulu]

It doesnt help that even legitimate sites link you through wierd non connected adresses to pay for stuff or enter login info.
Its the seperate payment provider the site uses, and you have no sure way of telling its the right adress or that the original site has been hacked and sending you to a bogus payment site.

If administrators started to use clear web adresses that are known to everyone this problem would be aleviated and even whitelists could be built into browsers for payment providers

[Nukro]

Announcements are linked in the launcher when you log in. They put them somewhere that everyone must visit before playing the game; it's not SE's fault if people don't read it.

I do. It's not Square-Enix's responsibility to make sure people don't get scammed. The fact they had any warnings at all is surprising. People need to take responsibility for their own information safety.

That's like telling someone "Watch out for landmines." and then blaming them for blowing up two years later. Everyone makes mistakes and expecting someone to live a perfect online life is just unrealistic. That's not even mentioning the fact that when you deal with MMO volumes of players over the timescale of an MMO's lifespan, every incident imaginable is bound to happen.

Besides, "letting people learn from their mistakes" doesn't change the fact that there are active scams and illegal activity being run on SE's service. It IS there job to deal with it because it's their service they are providing to us. Keeping it safe, clean, and fun should be the main objective no matter how you look at it.

I think Ravenblade1979's point is that there should be more preventative measures in place instead of just reactive bans. Examples like banning IPs, hardware bans, more restrictions on free account ect...
Saying "We told you so" isn't solving the problem, it's giving up on it.

[Joven]

That's like telling someone "Watch out for landmines." and then blaming them for blowing up two years later. Everyone makes mistakes and expecting someone to live a perfect online life is just unrealistic. That's not even mentioning the fact that when you deal with MMO volumes of players over the timescale of an MMO's lifespan, every incident imaginable is bound to happen.

Besides, "letting people learn from their mistakes" doesn't change the fact that there are active scams and illegal activity being run on SE's service. It IS there job to deal with it because it's their service they are providing to us. Keeping it safe, clean, and fun should be the main objective no matter how you look at it.

I think Ravenblade1979's point is that there should be more preventative measures in place instead of just reactive bans. Examples like banning IPs, hardware bans, more restrictions on free account ect...
Saying "We told you so" isn't solving the problem, it's giving up on it.

Maybe, just maybe SE believes their playerbase isn't a bunch of morons who can think for themselves instead of needing their hands held over every little thing. Or maybe they don't care and are doing the minimum to cover themselves. Either way it's still not their responsibility to make sure people aren't idiots.