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Man Tracked Down and Arrested Via WoW
kabome writes with this excerpt from a story about an alleged drug dealer who was located by law enforcement thanks to World of Warcraft:
"Roberson’s subpoena was nothing more than a politely worded request, considering the limits of his law enforcement jurisdiction and the ambiguity of the online world. 'They don’t have to respond to us, and I was under the assumption that they wouldn’t,' said Roberson. ... Blizzard did more than cooperate. It gave Roberson everything he needed to track down Hightower, including his IP address, his account information and history, his billing address, and even his online screen name and preferred server. From there it was a simple matter to zero in on the suspect's location."
Penny Arcade did their thing about it.
It kind of sucks for that guy, but basically if you don't like laws, you'll usually be better off trying to change them than run away. There's generally nothing unethical about helping the police find someone who's accused of committing a crime.
Qxe4
What's Blizzard going to do when someone posing as law enforcement gets some information and then goes and murders that person... Hmm?
Shh.
On a different note a guy who was fairly senior in a large ISP here told me that one of their subscribers send whattlooked like a suicide note over IRC. The person who spotted it got onto the ISP, who gave the billing address to the local police in that jurisdiction. They got there just in time.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
In Belgium that could mean that the data was obtained illegally and the case could be thrown out. You need a court order to get privacy data, even if you are a cop and walk into the building. Well, especially if you are a cop, as you should know what the procedure was.
Not only would it be possible to get the case thrown out, it would also be possible to sue the company for giving out personal information. There is a reason for this and even now it happens that in individual cases police abuse the knowledge they have for personal gain.
The positive part is that it should be clear to everybody involved what you can give out when and when you can't. "If you can't produce the correct papers, I can't give you anything. Now go away and leave the building." and yes, I have seen policemen escorted out of the building because they did not have the correct papers with them and if they would have stayed, we would have filed for trespassing and breaking and entering and what not.
They came back two hours later with the correct papers and got all the cooperation they needed. From that day on they came with a court order each time and each time got what they asked for in the warrent (nothing more and nothing less).
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Some immediate notes:
The talent build he's using would generally be considered inefficient. He has spent far more points in restoration than is necessary or effective. Many of those points should be placed deeper into Enhancement. The overall effect on his ability to heal would be enhanced. There is actually a lot of math supporting this, in addition to real world experience and data by a large number of players supporting it.
His professions are not high enough to provide any great benefit. Currently, all professions provide some personal in-game benefit, and with his professions as low as they are he would not be able to reap that benefit in any meaningful way. For example, his Skinning is at 300. This gives him 12 critical strike rating. If he leveled it to 450 (the current maximum) it would provide 40 critical strike rating. His Leatherworking is at 43. If it were at 400 or higher, he could get a benefit equal in in-game stat value to the 40 critical strike rating via an enchant to his bracers. The bonus can be in attack power, spell power, or stamina. And this all ignores the side benefits of being able to craft (perhaps debatably) useful items or gathering materials to sell in-game.
All of his items that say "requires level 70" are holdovers from level 70 content, and thus much weaker than currently available replacements. Most of his gear is missing enchants (not obvious to non-players) or gems (the empty colored square that appears on his boots). He has low level or low quality gear in many gear slots. Where it says "item level", those pieces of gear that are item level 219 or lower would be consider "low quality". Also, much of his gear contains spirit, a stat which is consider nearly useless for shaman regardless of how they spend their talent points or specialize their character.
However, looking at his achievements, you can see he turned level 80 in late October. He also has not received a new achievement since late November. It seems to me he was only max level for a month before being arrested. A player just reaching level cap, being aware that his gear is bad, is much less likely to enchant or gem it because he knows he will replace it soon. It's also possible the player had not yet researched what would constitute a strong healing build, and what he seems to be using would be passable for entry-level max level dungeons or raids. However, looking at his Feats of Strength, he's played since at least 2007, and really does not have an excuse for his professions not being at least 450 in skinning (skinning is probably the easiest profession to max out in the game, often you can do it by accident just by remembering to skin a beast after its killed instead of walking away) and 400 leatherworking (in order to reap the benefits of the previously mentioned bracer enchant).
There are actually a lot of excuses I could use for the state of his character, which would not necessarily indicate that he is a poor or unknowledgeable player, but the overwhelming evidence is that he is, in fact, bad. Browsing his achievements, he seems to have played at least somewhat consistently for the past 2 years, and was still unable to reach level 80 for an entire year. His talents, while passable, are only passable because the game is, overall, very easy. A smart player simply making logical decisions would at least have gone ten points into enhancement to improve their water shield or increase their critical strike chance. More likely 13 points to increase the healing from Earthliving Weapon. They would not have put a lone point in Convection (which only reduces mana cost on an attack spell that a healing shaman would rarely be casting, and by such an insubstantial amount when you don't have all 5 points that's not worth the bother). He's shown no attempt at working on his professions despite their substantial bonus, and based on his class/race combination I find it likely he chose those professions at a very low level and simply did not improve them out of laziness or ignorance. His gear really is und
If it has no info, it uses the registered address of your ISP. Otherwise, it's all data-mining. They have agreements with data-miners, who themselves have agreements with thousands upon thousands of websites. Go to Best Buy's websites, enter a zip/postal code to find the closest store to you? There, bam, the geo-locators have a zip code tied to an IP address. If you're not on an ISP that cycles frequently, they have you. I don't know how accurate USA zip codes are, but Canadian postal codes, they will get you a block, more or less. And if you enter an actual, real address anywhere ever, they have your real address tied to your IP address, too. But like I say, it doesn't just depend on your stupidity in giving out your address, it also depends on your ISP. My parents were on Shaw@Home internet. Our IP address never changed, ever. Not unless the modem lost power for more than 5 minutes. Now I'm on Sympatico DSL. Its IP address changes whenever its unplugged for even a second, and it also changes about once or twice a month, sometimes more. Even if I was dumb in giving out my address, it probably wouldn't be accurate for Sympatico customers, because they shuffle around a LOT, and the geo-location websites are never fully up to date, data-mining is time consuming! Also, some ISPs subnet a lot, so even if your IP address shuffles, it probably didn't stray very far from your real address, so they still would have at least your city, if not your neighborhood. Some ISPs don't subnet at all, so your IP address comes from a pool assigned to their entire service area. That's why some people will go in, and see that some websites report them in NYC, and some in San Fransisco. Because their ISP assigns its IP addresses wherever they fall, and if they're a national ISP, that could mean anywhere.
But anyways, yeah, if you're on an ISP that doesn't cycle its IP addresses around, and you're dumb enough to give your real address to websites at any point, it really could be CSI level magic. But the thing is, the IP Address to lat-long step, would really be IP Address to Address to Lat-Long, he must have just used a geo-locator site that does that conversion for you, and either doesn't give the base address it used for that computation, or the cop just didn't notice it.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI