Watch out for your Gaming Credentials

[wraith808]

An operation of this level is pretty scary.  Let's you know how profitable the gold seller/account seller enterprise is.

http://www.bluesnews.com/s/110672/stolen-gaming-credentials

They say there are credentials for at least 18 gaming websites in the database, an inventory including about 210,000 World of Warcraft accounts, 60,000 Aion accounts, 2 million PlayNC accounts, and 16 million Wayi Entertainment accounts.

I wish more companies would go with an authenticator like Blizzard does.  I just got back into WoW, and the inconvenience of using their iPhone app to get a unique key is definitely more than made up for by the fact that it's quite harder to crack my account, even if you have my password.

[Renegade]

This stuff is really interesting on a whole range of different levels. (The security aspect is actually quite boring though - heard it all a million times already.)

When you think that GAMES are being hijacked as a part of a large criminal enterprise, it really makes it quite poignant just how valuable virtual "property" is. Second Life cash/property is an excellent example. Seeing accounts sold another. This though, really drives it all home.

That whole social values thing really is jagged at the moment. After all, it's just a *GAME*... Or it's taken on a new role/aspect/meaning now?

[wraith808]

That whole social values thing really is jagged at the moment. After all, it's just a *GAME*... Or it's taken on a new role/aspect/meaning now?

From my perspective, there's two types of people that would want to buy gold/accounts for a serious amount of money.
1. Those looking to have a huge e-peen without the investment to actually progress in the games
2. Those who don't have the time to amass the money in game, but would rather enjoy the game, not as another job.

Those in category (1) are willing to pay exorbitant prices for the sake of bragging and pwning others.  Those in category (2) are willing to supplement their game with real money, because money=time.  When you break it down like that, it's easy to see that the monetization of such services would very easily make you a lot of money- that's one of the reason why the social games make so much money.