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Scams and Social Gaming

Posted by Soulskill on from the sign-up-now-for-fifteen-free-slashbucks dept.

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.

3 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. been happening forever in other forms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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."

    1. Re:been happening forever in other forms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      (Replying to my own post here) - also, why on earth would anyone let arbitrary scripts run when they don't have any idea what those scripts are doing? Maybe it's different for me; I grew up in the mainframe era, but my philosophy is, "I'll whitelist what *I* say is acceptable to run on my system. Nothing else gets to run."

      Websites with 20 different cross site scripts? Sorry, but no thanks - my computer is my computer, not your computer, and unless there's a reason *I* agree with, you don't get to run *your* software on it. It boggles my mind that today's youth operate under the principle of, "Hey, sure! I'll run anything from anywhere without having the foggiest idea what it actually does, and I'll put all my personal details online for scripts to harvest". Maybe it's just a generational culture clash, I'm not sure, but I honestly don't understand the mentality behind their approach, and I suspect they also don't understand the mentality behind mine either.

      On the other hand, I'm not the one with my computer in a botnet and having college kegstand photos turn up during job searches.

  2. Facebook has but one agenda.... by tardis+owner · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.