“Gold Fraud” Becoming Big Issue

The sad reality with MMO games is that gold farmers ruin the fun for a lot of people. I admit, I never liked the fact that some people could work hard for their in-game items, while others with money could hop onto a website and skip over the hard work simply by buying it straight-out. Regardless of your stance on things, there is an even more serious threat plaguing people: Gold Fraud.

According to PlayNoEvil, a growing trend is people using stolen credit card numbers to purchase subscriptions to the games, in effect giving the thief a free account in which to farm for more gold with. It’s become such a big problem with a UK bank, that they’ve had to stop all payments to Blizzard… truly incredible. It goes without saying… check your credit cards always and make sure there are no payments you are not aware of.

At the same time, the online game industry has faced a parallel problem. Criminals, recognizing the value of game accounts even if game companies don’t, grew the theft of game accounts and passwords into a major IT security problem. These criminals use phishing techniques and malicious code (trojans and worms) to steal account information so that they can loot a game account on the black market.

Source: PlayNoEvil