Scammers Continue to Wreak Havoc in MMO's

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday January 2, 2008 @04:54AM from the but-i-need-my-virtual-gold dept.

eldavojohn writes "We're all well aware of the scams that sometimes happen in online games like Eve Online. But despite this looking primarily like a problem with Eve Online, the MIT Technology Review brings us stories from Second Life and the very real $700,000 (USD) in Linden Dollars that has recently disappeared in what is appearing to be a classic ponzi scheme by a company named Ginko Banking. Unbelievably high interest rates coupled with some shady withdrawal limits leads to classic epic losses to investors. Eve Online was merely virtual currency but Second Life has a real monetary value associated with Linden Dollars & therefore is certain to see more and more scams pop up like this. How can Linden Labs set up a safety net to catch things like this?"

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Virtual NSA, virtual FBI by Animats · 2008-01-02 05:56 · Score: 4, Informative

Already happening. From a Linden Labs press release: The company also introduced algorithms that identify suspicious activity...
A virtual world is a total surveillance society. Everything can be logged. More than that, what you do there can be analyzed automatically.
Big Brother is watching. Big Brother is always watching.