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Scams and Social Gaming
TechCrunch is running a story about the prevalence of scams and shady monetization techniques in popular social games on Facebook and MySpace. As an alternative to buying in-game currency with real money, many games make use of lead-generation offers — letting players sign up for a trial service or take a survey in exchange for the currency. The system is rife with scams, and many game developers turn a blind eye to them, much to the detriment of the players and the legitimate advertisers — not to mention the games that rightly disallow these offers and fall behind in profits. The article asserts that Facebook and MySpace themselves are complicit in this, failing to crack down on the abuses they see because they make so much money from advertising for the most popular games.
Rightfully disallow? Surely you mean the scam offers. There's nothing inherently wrong with monetizing lead generation, as long as you do it in a legitimate and safe ways. As a matter of fact, it's probably best to keep 3rd parties out of the process, but that's just MHO.
Scams and the Imbeciles Who Fall for Them, Making Everyone Else Have to Put Up with Spam
I just don't get facebook apps. They all need to be given access to my personal data. Why does a survey need to access my personal data? Why do people allow this? Given the cavalier attitude towards protecting privacy and personal data, I'm not surprised to hear that scammers are finding fertile grounds. I wouldn't be surprised to find out (eventually) that some apps are deep data mining for phishers to profile targets better.
When I was a youth in the 1960's the same kinds of scams were around, just not involving online computer games. Then, they were about subscriptions to get "10 records for $1" or similar. In all cases, they just take advantage of (not to put too fine a point on it) dumb people who don't bother to look into what they're really subscribing to.
If you give your CC or bank numbers to _anyone_ without understanding the transaction, well, a fool and his money are soon parted.
From TFA:
A typical scam: users are offered in game currency in exchange for filling out an IQ survey. Four simple questions are asked. The answers are irrelevant. When the user gets to the last question they are told their results will be text messaged to them. They are asked to enter in their mobile phone number, and are texted a pin code to enter on the quiz. Once they've done that, they've just subscribed to a $9.99/month subscription.
I've always maintained that being careless with one's information online (personal details, phone numbers, CC numbers, addresses) means it's only a matter of time until you get ripped off. Scams have been around forever, probably since humanity invented money. How long does it take for people to wise up? We've had thousands of years now. At some point, I think we have to acknowledge that people do have some responsibility to act in responsible ways, yes, even on Da Interwebs. The way to eliminate this problem is for people to act in their own self interest. If they refuse to do that, maybe we need to say, "hey, we're sorry you got scammed, but YOU chose to give them your CC number / sign up for a $10/month subscription / give away all your personal details. Now you get to experience the consequences of your actions."
TANSTAAFL
P.T. Barnum was very much the optimist when he observed "There's a sucker born every minute." -- it has to be a couple dozen of them, at least. Until/unless Facebook and MySpace are held accountable for their lack of ethics and accountability for what they allow on their sites, users are going to get hosed -- which is just ONE of the reasons I refuse to join either of those over-hyped operations.
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
yep; laws and penalties. snooch.
contribute at wikademia
As others have posted, scams have been around for as long as there's been commerce. All this is, really, is more proof that P.T. Barnum was right: there's a sucker born every minute, and two to take him.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Facebook is a tool specifically geared to produce profit and be a platform for allowing others to profit. Social interaction and networking are but secondary interests at best. Yes it is free to use, free to join but in the end, it is all to get ads in front of you and get you to spend money. One can profit so many different ways. Serious (business, organizational) networking is but one way one can profit. Data Mining is probably one of the biggest sources of profit and potential profit. Project Gaydar is an example of just one data mining project and a bit on the scary/dark side of things.
Why are FarmVille etc. even enjoyable? I can't see what would make someone so enthralled in planting virtual seeds as to abandon common sense (not to mention waste time) giving away their personal information online.
Le français vous intéresse?
Corporations are assholes. Thieves. Degenerates. Scammers. (Yes even the so-called good ones occasionally scam the citizens. See amazon and the erased Kindles.) I've reached the conclusion that as of this year 2009, individuals may still be good (they have morals), and single-owner companies might still be good (again, constrained by morality), but corporations absolutely can not be trusted.
Corporations are almost as bad as governments.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Over the last few months, I have heard a lot about what is causing microtransaction games such a hard time and what is preventing them from being profitable; either through the lack of a solid microtransaction method, such as with mobile app based games to things like this where it is scammers that are affecting the market. My experiences playing Evony pointed out something to me. In order for a microtransaction game to succeed, it has to have #1) enjoyable game play regardless of whether someone chooses to engage in microtransactions and #2) not implement microtransactions so that it just over-balances the gameplay in favor of those willing to spend money.
This can be extended out to any game that has in-game currency that can be potentially traded for real life currency, including WoW, even though Blizzard strictly frowns upon it. In WoW, you can make your character stronger with less effort but not in a way that changes the game for you or for others other than you will have to spend less time 'farming' for stuff yourself.
In Evony, there was a ranking system that controlled how many cities you could control. You were able to move up the ranks by finding medals and turning them in to complete quests to get the next ranks. You can get these medals in game but they were extremely rare. There were other things you could buy to speed up various aspects of the game or do other minor things, like changing your name but the main draw were the medals. So, finally I put some money into it and stopped playing the game all together shortly after because I discovered that having more cities didn't fix the aspect of the game that was disappointing me. It was a PvP game that heavily favored defense over offense so the best strategy was to just build up your defenses and appear strong enough to not get attacked. You would need to be roughly 5x - 10x stronger than an enemy to be able to knock out their defenses, assuming equal knowledge in what to build... not a fun system and not one fixed by microtransactions.
Many people continue to make massive amounts of profit through selling gold in WoW despite many games trying to monetize off similar transactions as part of their systems. Problems with microtransactions aren't what is killing them... it is the lack of a compelling game in the first place.
A friend of mine recently posted this to her Facebook wall with a comment about people invading privacy and "stealing" her information:
So I asked in the nicest way possible "Did you think the people writing those quizzes were volunteers or worked for some kind of charity? What would you think if this stuff showed up in your inbox? Would you click on it?". Her reply was amazing. She TRUSTED facebook!
How is this even news? It's news because it's a new medium and people seem to need to learn all the old rules over again. There would be zero story here if these quiz offers and games were showing up in people's snail mail boxes. Just recently we've all gotten bored and thoroughly "experienced" with the same phenomenon arriving via email (w1n F1Fty d0llar$! Click here!). I don't know why people need to learn the same lessons over and over again, but they will, and then stories like this will be as dull and "back page" as stories about the mailman bringing junkmail, or nigerians wanting help in your inbox. Kind of sad but I guess that's (most) humans and there's not much to be done about it.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
...not so long ago we called it Pimping, Prostitution and Pandering. Its that familiar stench of a french whore house and television network. Venereal "infectious" media and other social networking diseases are spreading like swine flu over every exploitable piece of social media channeled to the consumerist public. Social Networking today replaces the "soap opera" of the last generation. Only now, we're not just watching the soap while folding laundry - instead we are the soap opera, on Facebook. Now, while we're at work, we can't watch "The Hung and The Breastless" but we can kill a fifteen minute break on Myspace - and bingo! that's where they get busy with that ad budget. But the advertising is over the top on tv with hours of infomercials on half of the pay cable and satellite channels we pay to view. And the internet and social networking are going to get even worse than that. The fact is that squeezing the consumer wallet with annoying ads and phishing scams and products like enzyte is the only "monetizing" opportunity in this mass media slut fest. The fatal flaw is that "they" are diluting the effectiveness of advertising because there is too much of it, and we all resent it. And we're broke. Identity theft is the only career opportunity that's left for RONCO and Chia Pet moguls, because nobody is buying their crap. They can data mine us to death, it won't matter if we are all jobless because this is our only revenue stream. Can't we pay people to actually do something besides "slice and dice" the public in nice bite sized nuggets? Would you like the honey or mustard dipping sauce with your culture today?
Capitalist swine.
I signed up for one of these.
I am fairly clever, so I knew the terms. 10 for ($1+S&H) contracted to buy 4 more at regular+S&H.
No big deal.
The truly scary thing is a slew of the Dotters really are doing okay, we're not deciding whether to eat half or a quarter of the Ramen Noodles for that morning. We make a lot of fuss over principles of $5.
So ... I never bothered to cancel the subscription. I actually got more amusement seeing one random CD a month (per the terms) wander into my mailbox. It took the very edge of the grind out of life. I overpaid some $6 per month... but ... who... cares? I treated it as $6 of entertainment surprise.
Finally they closed the program division itself so it went away.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Exactly so. And then the persons who make a fuss over $5 happily spend $50+ for one night out at bars, which always isn't really even that nice night out.
So, I wonder what this kinda stuff will look like on Google wave. I haven't received my invite yet, but I've watched their 80min video and been following several discussions about it. It seems like anyone can add anyone to a wave, so all it will take is a robot to add everyone on a server to a spam/phishing/scam wave. I wonder if you can just leave the wave? New technologies can have interesting new exploits. I don't remember Google ever addressing spam or other forms of abuse in the presentation.
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
offers that give you things for signing up for trial offers or applying for credit cards, etc.
A lot of software companies use trialpay for buying the full version of Anti-virus programs or other software. Trialpay asks the user to sign up for trial offers or apply for credit cards or buy things in order to get the software for free.
When this thing first appeared it was iPods and Mac Books for free for completing a list of offers that would have been more than the iPod or Mac Book would cost.
Facebook and MySpace games require more friends to play the game better, you cannot get beyond certain levels without enough friends, and in order to get more advantage in the game using Paypal or the Offers they get virtual money to buy things in the games (like robots that stand in for friends because they don't have enough friends to play the game with them), gold/credits in the game, resetting their energy, and other stuff. One can buy their way to a better game.
You can play the game without making the trial offers, but you won't have the advantages that the people who buy virtual currency or do trial offers will get.
Facebook and MySpace games use Shockwave or Flash but are buggy and some games are still in beta test like Knighthood, etc.
Yes Facebook and Myspace should crack down on the scams but in doing so they would be upsetting their advertisers and thus their income. The advertisers collect the user's email via the applications and games and quizzes and then spam the users for products as well. That is why I don't play very many games or take very many quizzes at Facebook anymore.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Welcome to capitalism.
> The article asserts that Facebook and MySpace themselves are complicit in this,
> failing to crack down on the abuses they see because they make so much money from
> advertising for the most popular games.
I don't know about this case but I can give information on something quite similar in a very different field.
In Nl there's a website for 2nd hand stuff (that's how it started out anyway) called marktplaats. New stuff is also sold, and there's even a section on meeting people, finding people you lost contact with etc. I didn't notice that until last year, and I read some comments about people being ripped off. This was in the dating section. I thought it might be interesting to have a look see what happened when I sent a message. So, I did, and invariably those messages resulted in replies which asked me to send an SMS to a certain pay number. Which I didn't do because I don't like mobile phones (so I don't even have one...), and why should I? I know many people do like to use mobile phones for message in preference to emails, but something wasn't right. I checked the SMS numbers and it turns out if you send a message a company gets money + the person using that number. There are some legitimate possiblities for this, but all the references were for scams of women asking men (actually, vice versa too sometimes, yes it happens) to SMS, then breaking of contact when the men want to meet or something like that.
So, I examined the structure (use of language) and titles of the contact ads, and more. I concluded that most of the ads were fake.
Some more information:
- The website did remove the relevant ads when I mentioned the SMS stuff
- I mentioned this on the forum section of the website and after that, the number of ads dropped enormously (i.e. others complained about the offending listings).
- No structural solution was implemented even though I suggested and easy one, which was to state on the page for each contact ad, not to use pay-SMS numbers because these are usually from scammers. That should keep replies down to scammers to want you to SMS.
- The website makes money from the scammers as these pay to get the ad back up in front of the lists of ads regularly (so it gets visited more times). This is also of course why they don't take further actions. It also shows what kind of people run this website, they don't care about you.
Please don't say people deserve to ripped off by such scammers. That someone is stupid is not a valid reason for feeling he/she deserves to be ripped off. Assholes deserve to be ripped off, not people who may not be smart. In fact, it's not about being smart, smart people also fall for (confidence) tricks.
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Techcrunh implying this is how the games make their money when in fact it's a very small piece of their profit, at least the top 3. Then you to assume most of that is legit, the offers. There may be a few that sneak in that aren't. This article is hogwash and is attempting to make a non-story. This person is either angry about an offer they choose or more likely its a gambit to affect players like myofferpal and superrewards with some negative advertising. I'd check into the real source of this article.
And we thought Myspace was a zestpool. Facebook is a zestpool with a prettier exterior.
As an MMO player, I've seen a dramatic rise in the frequency and sophistication of tricks designed to get access to players' accounts over the last few years.
As a bit of background for those who don't play these games; even though most games technically forbid it, the trade of in-game currency for real-life money is big business. A quick look around a few of the well-known sites that are used for this purpose show that, for example, 1,000 World of Warcraft gold will sell for around $10.
Now, those selling the in-game currency need to obtain it from somewhere to sell it. Traditionally, they've obtained their money via "legitimate" means, usually a sweat shop full of part-time students working shifts to keep characters earning money through fairly mechanical processes 24/7/365. I say this is legitimate, but this is only true in so far as it does not violate any game mechanics; it can have a fairly crippling effect on a game's economy and can make life much worse for genuine players. In some cases, this was augmented by 3rd-party automation software (usually called bots) which took away the requirement to have somebody at each keyboard and allowed one person to supervise a dozen or so clients.
However, in recent times, many of those involved in the in-game currency trade have decided to cut out this part of their operations. Rather than earning the cash on their own characters, they rather steal it from the accounts of other players, by gaining access to their account and stripping it bare. This has the twin benefits of not requiring anything like the human effort that earning the money directly via in-game means has and of not driving inflation (reducing the real-world value of the game's currency - unless the game's operator has a policy of refunding stolen currency).
Now, back when this first started to appear, I was still playing Final Fantasy XI, a game whose highly sophisticated and relatively unrestrained in-game economy rendered it highly vulnerable to the advances of real-currency traders (WoW, by comparison, has a pretty basic economy where players never really need much gold to get by, rendering it less fertile ground). Back then, there were three basic ways to lose your account. The first was greed; you sign up for a scam power-levelling service, or a currency trade website that requires you to register your account details. Surprise, surprise, the nice people offering this wonderful service really just empty out your account. Obviously, only the truly atupid are going to fall for something like this (though I can name one or two who did).
The second method relied on fear; you'd get an official looking e-mail, purporting to be from Square-Enix (or Blizzard - this still happens in WoW), claiming that your account was believed to be inactive/in violation or something and you needed to reply to them, stating all of your account details, to prevent it from being locked. Again, fairly basic stuff, though with a convincing enoug e-mail, you will probably always get a few suckers.
The third was pure bad-luck and not really relevant to the currency trade. I remember two FFXI players who broke up with their real-life partners and forgot that said partner had their login details - which they promptly used to trash their account.
However, just as I was making the transition from FFXI to WoW (about 2.5 years ago), more sophisticated attacks started showing up. These generally revolve around the use of keyloggers, to caputre the player's login details. The really big one that I remember, which hit a lot of FFXI players I knew at the time, involved allakhazam - a previously legitimate community site - which accidentally carried a number of malware-laden banner ads. By all accounts, the creeps behind it harvested logins for a few weeks, then struck quickly at as many accounts as they could before people wised up.
Over in World of Warcraft, the situation is even worse, largely due to the requirement that anybody who wants to play in any kind of vaguely serious raid requires 3r
Everyone is the same, in a different field.
You know about PCs, so you are very careful what code you run.
How careful are you about what you eat?
Do you check t see what additives and colorants have been added to every ingredient? Do you check that the food meets the guideline daily amounts of salt, sugar, fat?
Do you check the calories?
Or do you just go "hey that looks nice" and eat it?
Poor choice of code might get your machine slowed or even added to a bot net. A poor diet can kill you.
its just so annoying when you just wanna play for fun and someone comes along in lets say, Battle Stations and just sinks your ship using paid-for weapons. I think that there should be limits on what they can and cannot do.
Smoking cures cancer. Smoking also cures stupidity. check darwinawards . com for some stupid stuff