FIFA World Cup fans: watch out for fake EA phishing scams

Phishers and scammers are targeting FIFA World Cup fans with a series of scams spearheaded by illegitimate social media accounts.

A series of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts have popped up over the past few months purporting to be officially related to EA and EA Sports in some way. Usually, they present as support accounts of some kind, which purport to offer free Ultimate Team members for FIFA 14 or content related to 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil.

As some companies do genuinely run support through social media - Microsoft's Xbox Support account has won awards - these fake accounts look quite believable to the unsuspecting eye, and when they direct the user to what seems to be an Origin or console network log-in to receive further support, the user may think nothing of it.

It isn't a real Origin site, of course, and the user's details are promptly phished.

If you are looking for EA support, your best bet is to go straight to the main Origin website and follow the links from there.

If you see a competition or giveaway, always check to make sure it's genuine before participating - one of the best ways to protect yourself is to check the URL of any site asking you to log-in. Domains and sub-domains can be confusing, but the one you want to check is the final word before the ".com", ".co.uk", "net" or similar. For example, something.something.something.origin.com/something ( or ea.com, easports.com and so on) will be legitimate, but origin.ea.something.com/something is almost certainly not.

Well, no doubt I'm preaching to the converted here - surely none of the handsome, clever VG247 audience has ever been caught by a phishing attack - right?

Thanks, Engadget.