Online Gaming Scams
I learnt about the World of Warcraft with the release of Warcraft II way back in 1995. Who would have projected that the future iteration of the Warcraft series, World of Warcarft (WoW) would be such a world wide phenomenon? World of Warcraft, often referred to as WoW, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) by Blizzard Entertainment.
WoW has become the biggest online game to date with more than 11.5 million monthly subscribers and is currently the world’s largest MMORPG in those terms. WoW holds the Guinness World Record for the most popular MMORPG. In April 2008, World of Warcraft was estimated to hold 62% of the massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) market.
These particular types of games, multiplayer online role-playing games, are typical targets for online gaming scams. Simply put, where there are people, there are scams, deceptions and trickery designed to gain much through little or no effort. So what are some common scams?
There are a number of scams that run online, here are but a few:
- Fake buyers
- Illegal bots
- Gold harvesting
- Sale of accounts
- Social engineering email
Fake buyers
Scams such as one person selling swords in town for 20 pieces of gold and another person just across the market place buying the same type of sword for 40 gold pieces. So what happens? A player figures that they can make a quick dollar and purchases a large number of swords and then proceeds to wander to the other side of the market place only to find that the character is no longer buying swords!
Illegal bots
Another scam is the purchase and sale of illegal bots and using them to harvest gold which is then sold on online trading sites such as ebay. These bots control player’s characters automatically and serve to accumulate gold and experience whilst the human player is going about their daily life. Needless to say this is an offence that could have your account banned.
Gold harvesting
Then there are the factions that exist purely for financial gain. Many groups are dedicated to harvesting gold from the game, which they then sell for real money to other players. This practice is expressly prohibited in Blizzards terms of use agreement. An old friend told me about a forum post that he came across about a player that had purchased an amount of gold online from a gold harvesting group. Unsurprisingly, the player did not receive any gold, but he lost real dollars on the transaction.
Sale of accounts
Other profitable endeavours which are not tolerated by Blizzard include the sale of accounts online. Some of the players dedicate a significant amount of real dollars to build and equip a character and then sell the account for a large amount of money.
Social engineering email
A scam that has recently surfaced includes players receiving fake emails that claim to be from Blizzard requesting user names and passwords for an audit, clearly a social engineering scam.
So how can you combat these scams? What can you do to minimise your exposure?
There are a few things:
- Treat your financial interactions with the game seriously.
- Play by the rules. Do not involve yourself in questionable practices. The game rules are designed to protect your online security.
- Don’t respond to email requests for account information such as usernames or passwords from anyone.
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