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Police Investigating Virtual Furniture Theft
krou writes "Finnish police are involved in the investigation of up to 400 cases of theft from virtual world Habbo Hotel, with some users reporting the loss of up to €1000 of virtual furniture and other items. Users were targeted using a phishing scam that used fake webpages to capture usernames and passwords. There is no mention as to whether or not the thieves made off with the bath towels, gowns, shampoo bottles, and soaps."
There is no mention as to whether or not the thieves made off with the bath towels, gowns, shampoo bottles, and soaps.
What good are towels if the pool's closed?
We must protect this house.
Here's my thing... If someone is, say, "persuadable" enough to spend 1000 euros on *virtual fscking furniture* then what's to say they will have the sense to protect any of it? The police need to issue citations for criminal stupidity.
Oh, does anyone know if the pool is open?
If someone stole your shares or "those bunch of digits" in your bank account, it's still theft. So it's the same in this case.
Some years back someone in China lent someone his virtual sword and the borrower refused to return it and actually sold it (for quite a bit of money), so the lender went to the cops but they laughed at him, so he took matters into his own hands and killed the thief. ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4397159.stm )
Not saying it was right for him to do that, but it's quite understandable. The sword was worth a lot of money at market prices (USD1000), and probably worth even more to the lender since he didn't want to sell it. I'm sure people get killed for far less than that in China (or many other places).
p.s. reminder copying is not the same as stealing. These people lost access to stuff.
"We have done five home searches in five cities in Finland," he said.
Unfortunately, the virtual furniture was nowhere to be seen.
How many people in Finland are getting away with real theft while the police are busy investigating imaginary theft?
Finnish IRS coming next?
I can only feel bad for the people of habbo hotel, losing their fake furniture that they paid a totally reasonable price for. I wish the for the police working on this case to catch those evil criminals, and of course for their safety. It's a dangerous job catching internet tough guys, and I can only hope that these police return to their families in one piece.
Feel free to mod me down, just know that unlike some Anonymous Cowards I'm not afraid to express my views as myself.
Is "internet access" an imaginary belonging?
It's not like you can hold "internet access" in your hands.
Is it any more tangible than virtual furniture?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Ok, if someone takes a physical object from you without your consent, that's theft. If they break into your house to do it, that's B&E + theft.
If you have an online account with "things" that are sellable/transferable out of it, is taking those "theft"? Obviously the B&E part is some form of computer trespassing, etc, but do the items exist in such a fashion to be considered "missing" if stolen?
I get they are no longer accessible from your account, but if they can only be viewed through "the web" do they really exist?
If I buy a physical book off amazon, I get a physical thing. If amazon goes the way of the dodo, I still have my book.
If I buy a virtual couch from VirtualCouchGuys.com and they go out of business, my, as well as everyone elses couch, goes bye bye. Just the same as a cell phone service/plan would go bye bye if the company simply folds and turns out the lights.
So wouldn't virtual goods be services then? It is a service to log in and see a blue pin striped couch more than it is an item. But what about the whole "theft" portion? How can you "steal" service? The only thing I can think of is akin to stealing bandwidth through WEP Wifi or cutting someones phone line and splicing yours into it or doing the same with cable.
You're not stealing a physical object, you're stealing a service. I guess that's the only rational way to go after "virtual furniture" thieves. But, now, if I steal cable, can the cops arrest me? Apparently, yes. The actual charge appears to be "unauthorized use of computer, cable, or telecommunications property" which seems to fit with virtual items as well (correct me if I'm wrong).
Now, I know this is in Finland, but it seems it would apply here in the States too.
I can only shake my head at someone who spent around 1000 euros, dollars, etc on some string of 1's and 0's in a database for virtual furniture and/or pets. At least my real dogs will have a shot at chewing up a thief before they get out of the house unlike the virtual counterparts. :)
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Cops don't have enough to do. Heck they are now going after theft of Imaginary Property, too.
"Is "internet access" an imaginary belonging?"
It's a legal right, starting next month.
Due to theft.
The people you get internet access from are called Internet Service Providers. They are not Internet Imaginary Belongings Providers. Internet access is a service, not something you buy to keep.
Socialist Europe denying its citizens the right to protect themselves and their property. If those Habbos had been armed this never would have happened.
1200 British pound sterlings = 1756.8000 US dollars
I can only shake my head at someone who spent around 1000 euros, dollars, etc on some string of 1's and 0's in a database
What is your checking account balance other than "some string of 1's and 0's in a database" at your credit union or bank?
How about the money in your bank account (assuming you aren't one of the "all of my money is in paper and coins in a jar on my shelf" set)? Until you go to retrieve it from the bank, it is just ones and zeros in a database, just like the virtual goods in games. You could even argue that holding stock in a company is a virtual good (the certificate is just a physical token of the virtual good)
The value of the materials is not the only consideration in the value of a good. Even the paper that money is printed on is worth less than the denomination of currency it represents.
My imaginary friends have been stealing from me for years.
is it that I couldn't even get the cops to come out to the scene of the crime when my "reality" based car was broken into.
If that is a punishable offense, then I should be doing hard time for my exploits in early Ultima Online. It was like the wild west online.
"Men willingly believe what they wish." - Julius Caesar
Don't have much to add other than Halting State by Charles Stross is a great read if you're interested in this sort of thing.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Banks are required to have lot of security measures, and they are responsible, have their own security stuff, not like virtual worlds.
Truth should be a defense against Flamebait moderation.
Nothing in the above post is untrue or exaggerated.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
How the fuck can there be theft in a world where the game administrators can reinstitute the accounts WITH THE PUSH OF A BUTTON? It's not like these people "deprived" anybody of anything that can't be instantly recreated. Hell, applying the word "create" is even too generous.
The lunatics who spent €1000 on "virtual furniture" needs to be committed to small, padded cells until they can get a grip on reality. And if the game admins refuse to give the furniture back to them, toss them in jail for fraud.
This isn't cute. It's fucking nuts, and it scares the crap out of me that people are losing their grip on reality and people might go to prison for it.
Scammers create new accounts and send a tell to many on-line players, pretending to be a representative of Blizzard. Some of them say your account has been disabled (or will be disabled unless you immediately visit their site), some of them promise a beta key or a downloadable item, etc. The message always includes a website address, which usually contains words that people associate with blizzard (e.g. "us-battle.wow.net" or something). Some of these messages are gramatically correct but most of them are in laughably broken English.
So then what happens? Some small fraction of curious or gullible players go to the sites, and maybe even enter their account name and password to "log in", thinking they are logging into an actual Blizzard account management service. I've seen fake sites that look like exact copies of the WoW Armory login page, for example. Even if they don't enter anything, the sites might exploit browser vulnerabilities to install malware that specifically targets WoW, trying to collect your password with a keylogger.
Once the scammers have access to your account, they wait until you've been offline for a couple hours and then they log in as you and pillage your account for everything valuable. Items that are locked to you, which you potentially worked for MONTHS to acquire, are sold to NPC vendors at the fixed vendor price (which often under-values them by a factor of 1000 or more; a crafted epic item that cost you over 10,000g for the materials and took you two months to produce, will get vendored for about 20g the same as any other epic item of that level).
Then they launder the gold they acquired through lots of accounts to try and hide where it came from. Maybe they do the same with valuable tradeable items, too; I'm not sure. I only know a couple of people who've been hacked like this, and it was devastating to them -- all of the stuff they'd spent months acquiring, destroyed by some scammer for the equivalent of about $10 USD in gold. You can petition Blizzard to freeze your account and restore it to an earlier state, but if your computer was compromised with a keylogger, its just a matter of time until it happens to you again. (I know one poor guy who has been hacked 3 times. Ordinary folks don't have much of a clue when it comes to securing their Windows computers against this kind of malware.)
Anyway, why do the scammers work this way? Why not just farm up the gold using bots or chinese wage slaves? Well, its like spam -- there's just enough gullible people out there, to make it a profitable endevour.
Imagine what the perps will feel when they are sitting in a REAL jail cell facing REAL charges for an imaginary crime. We need a sanity check. I'm hoping it will come in the form of a Finnish judge who looks at the case and laughs himself into a coma right after dismissing it and calling the "owners" and "buyers" of imaginary goods complete morons.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Rotide seems to think that it must be a physical object in order to be "theft". What about identity theft?
"...How about the money in your bank account..."
Money or credits held by a bank (that's an accounting word debits/credits, etc) are recognized as an official representation for the exchange of goods and services by an authoritative body (e.g. the government). Unless there is an authoritative body that is willing to convert virtual goods into an official form (i.e. currency), the ones and zeros in a database will remain ones and zeros. A purchaser of virtual goods simply made a one way transaction with a company to exchange currency for bits and bytes. Furthermore, a bank can't pull additional ones and zeros out of thin air to reproduce lost/stolen funds. The rules of accounting (assets = liabilities + equity) and basic mathematics dictate the inability to pull additional ones and zeros from the air to recover lost currency. In case of a bank, an increase in liabilities (e.g. your deposit) has to be retrieved from the banks assets (I Know, this seems backwards but that's why they call it crediting your account for deposits and debiting your account for withdrawals.)
A stock certificate or share of a company is a different story. Stocks are the right to assets, future profits and liabilities of an organization. The sale of a stock is the one way exchange of currency for that right. The price is determined either speculatively on the open market, by a board of directors, or by the present value of all future dividends. The physical certificate is merely proof that you are entitled to those profits/liabilities. In a virtual world, your purchased furniture holds no value and at any time can be removed by the owners of the servers. A stock certificate can't simply be cancelled at the whim of the corporation, and the only terms of service you agree to is what is held by your local laws (state law for US citizens).
This is why this story is laughable. Since the virtual furniture can be reproduced at any time without incurring loss (other than a few electrons), there really is no loss at all. Phishing for the account information on the other hand may violate laws depending on your location.
Funny story, back when I as a young-mid teen, I made a simple little phishing site aimed at habbo. Made accounts, told people to visit it. Filled rooms with furniture, used the acquired accounts to tell all their friends... I'm sure I could've worked out how much it was all worth, but who's stupid enough to spend money on virtual furniture anyway?
SQL programmer goes to a bar. Walks up to two tables and says 'Excuse me, may I join you?'.
They call non-destructive duplication of (multimedia) data theft..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How is this relevant to anything?
Why was this was modded down?
The article mentions €1000 (euro), which is equivalent to ~$1200 (USD).
How is the fact that £1200 (GBP) is equivalent to $1756.8 (USD) relevant to any of this?
Here I sit, all broken hearted.
Came to poop, but only farted.
I'm almost tempted to re-create the items, Tell the police I found them on the interwebs and they should return it to the owner. I'm being serious, but then i'd probably be done for IP theft against the games creators. Sad that this has come this far. P.S. I wonder if I'd get a reward?
Unfortunately I heard that the pool was indeed still closed.