Many thousands of players have received e-mails inviting them to join an “alpha test” with Blizzard. These are scammers looking to rip off unsuspecting victims.
A few points to remember if you receive an invitation to help test Cataclysm or any other Blizzard Beta product:
Blizzard does not invite the general player base to alpha tests. Even early beta tests tend to be saved for the press. It has an army of game developers and testers for that. As with the previous two expansions, beta testing will be announced by Blizzard on the official World of Warcraft website. Beware of clicking official-looking links to that site in e-mails, as scammers often build official-looking copycat sites – instead bookmark the official site or use the link on the game login screen.
It cannot be stressed enough to players that Blizzard will never ask you for your credit card, password, user name, e-mail address or any other information it already has. This will not happen ingame, nor in e-mail. If you are asked for this info, you are very likely being scammed.
