Over the last week or so, I got these two emails, and I thought it would be interesting to have a look at them. One is a real invite, and the other is a fake, but what are the differences.
The from emails are potentially believable @blizzard.com v @email.blizzard.net
Say it’s from Blizzard and we will believe it right? The top one is the real one ( and yes did check my account)
Titles of the emails are the same, the name of the “From” is the same but it’s only the email address that is different. ( and Sif bliz would use a .net
Images are identical. The Text is same font, writing is same color. (different wording though ) but the biggest difference is that one tells you ” Play free now” with a clickable button and the other one tells you to log into your battlenet account and get the installer.
But as they have pretty much copied the images and the text from the real beta invite, what things give you an indication that it’s a fake?
Because of similar scams – not just wow ones, I am now naturally suspicious of any email that asks me to log into their site via a link in their email.
The “Play free” selling point also – I guess irks me. Of course the beta is free, but the free point of the Beta is already an assumption. They don’t need to use that it’s free to convince me more to play it.
The .net at the end of the email instead of .com
I was expecting to get a fake one at some point. I expect it, and therefore are forewarned.
and of course the ultimate test to see if it is attached to my battlenet account.
First step I would have taken if I got the fake one first, would have been to check my battlenet.
But caution is no longer paranoia – at least think before you click on things like this. Be suspicious, find other ways to verify stuff if you can ect….
Provided by 
Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog 
Yeah, that’s why I use an email I made especially for WoW and only Blizz knows it. Feels a lot safer.
And I have a spam catchall email that gets a ton of phishing emails, at which I have a good laugh and then sometimes reply to with choice insults.
I had a inactive account get hacked and banned, but I get so much spam on that email for wow and other games I have never played that I can only assume I deleted the official emails from blizzard:(
On your tweet, the lots of healers in wsg and Horde playing defensively got old fast. Do you really need 4 healers+tank+3 dps on D when your 0:1 down? let alone thats how it stays for the next 20 minutes Gah Oh well I farmed all the rep I needed.
I was leaving bg’s when there was more then 3 healers, just makes for a torturous game, probably bad for my leaving bg stats or what ever they keep on people but 20 min of pain, v log into hunter and shoot stuff = fun!
I have now got to the point that I never believe any email sent to me is from Blizzard, I learned of my participation in the beta by inspecting my Bnet account page.
I almost got had when the Cata beta invites were sent as I blogged about back in the day http://www.evlyxx.co.uk/2010/08/beta-spam.html
at a glance you could see why people would believe it, but a healthy dash of skepticism is now a life requirement.
I saw this and clicked on the play wow free, but thankfully, the google chrome phishing thing saw that it was a fake website, so I stopped and went back.