Phishing sites and emails designed to look like official bank notifications are nothing new, but perhaps you should look closer next time you get a suspecting email for your favorite online game. Kaspersky Labs is reporting that during 2012 they tracked over 7,000 daily attempts to break in gamers online accounts, mostly via email containing malicious links.
As is the case when you receive fake bank emails, cybercriminals are recreating emails you would normally get from popular online games, mentioning names of well-known gaming worlds to look legit and enticing users to click through. Once that's done, the sites will try to get your username and password information, and ultimately get access to in-game items that can be sold for real money.
The worrying part is that emails are actually being quite effective. Kaspersky tracked 15 million attempts to access phishing sites posing as pages from popular online game developers.
Even though game names are not specifically mentioned in the article, it would appear obvious that those that let you accumulate virtual goods that can be transfered or sold for real money would be the most appropiate targets. To name a few that will let you do that: Diablo 3, Second Life and Ultima Online.
Also note there's additional potential risk if a user fooled into giving away his login credentials reused the same data for accessing his email account, from there the hacker could work his way into other online accounts. According to Kaspersky's data, gamers are being targeted worldwide but top countries where they are observing the attempts include Russia, China and India.