World of Warcraft threatens porn industry
Posted on | January 18, 2010 | No Comments
According to this Tom’s Hardware US story, World of Warcraft is now encroaching on porn industry territory. The news article features Aiden, who runs his wife Belladonnas porn site on the internet. The article accuses online gaming such as World of Warcraft of eliminating the porn-for-profit market, based on a recent Daily Beast listing describing the top five reasons why porn-for-profit is dying.
Perhaps not to your great surprise, industry insider Aiden points out that both porn and online gaming are both forms of entertainment that appeal to similar crowds.
“It is all entertainment that you are getting involved in the same way as porn is entertainment,” said Aiden. “I won’t say everyone, but a lot of people in the industry play videogames. The games are competition for porn. Fans jerk off to porn and are done, but you can keep playing a game.”
Aiden, an avid World of Warcraft player himself, is no stranger to spending time in the online gaming world. “Yeah, my wife and I occasionally argue about the amount of time I spend playing,” he admits.
Finally, Aiden nails the coffin by underlining the biggest reason why porn-for-profit is dying. “People can download stuff for free these days, so why the heck are they going to buy it? The only ones making money out of porn are the novelty companies,” Jeremy said.
Source: Tom’s Hardware US
World of Warcraft affair lead to arrest of housewife
Posted on | January 16, 2010 | No Comments
Authorities say Lauri Price, 42, Houston mother and housewife, flew to Canada and lured a 16-year-old boy, whom she allegedly had an online sexual relationship with for more than a year, away from his home. According to Harris County District Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Donna Hawkins, the relationship started in September 2008 when Lauri Price met the then 15-year-old boy through popular online video game World of Warcraft.
Lauri Price now faces charges on two counts of online solicitation of a minor and one count of enticing a child with the intent to commit a felony. “She talked to him about sex and a lot of different stuff. It was a very long, long grooming process” said Lt. Matthew Gray with the Houston Metro Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce.
A dispute in the case is regarding the legal age of consent, which is 17 in Texas and 16 in Canada. Lauri Price’s attorney, Skip Cornelius, said he finds it both interesting and sad that Texas authorities are prosecuting Price for solicitation even though the boy was old enough in Canada to give consent.
If convicted, Lauri Price faces from two to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 for each charge, said Donna Hawkins.
Source: AP
AP: Man faces charges over World of Warcraft account fraud
Posted on | January 15, 2010 | No Comments
USA - Police in Clearwater, Florida has arrested a 23-year old Christopher H. Bouffard and charged him with two counts of grand theft. According to the Associated Press, the man was scheming to defraud people using his World of Warcraft account as bait. Bouffard never gave out the information to his account even though authorities say at least two people paid Bouffard $760 each for his virtual property.
This scam is probably the oldest one in the book and it happens almost every day. With 11,5 million monthly subscribers, the economy related to buying, selling and trading World of Warcraft accounts is huge. I am very pleased to see the authorities dealing with the losses inflicted by these scammers in such a serious manner.
Tags: account-security > accounts > Avoid Scammers > How to Sell A WoW Account > News > Safety > scammer > theft. > World of Warcraft > WorldOfWarcraft > WoW
Putting pressure on World of Warcraft scammers
Posted on | January 18, 2010 | No Comments
Popular World of Warcraft account trading forum WoWtrade.dk has an entire section devoted to reporting scammers. The burden of evidence is always on the victim and evidence is often scarce. YourAccountSeller.com has adopted a different policy. However, rather than accusing people directly, we will be making two e-mail lists: A list of red flags and a list of yellow flags.
If an e-mail is found in the list of red flags, it means the scamming has been proved. If the e-mail is found in the list of yellow flags, it means the e-mail (and the person behind it) is in some way associated with scamming. You should refrain from trading with people found in BOTH the yellow flag list and the red flag list.
Head over to the list here: List of known World of Warcraft scammers.
Tags: account theft > account-security > AccountTheft > Avoid Scammers > cataclysm-scam > cataclysm-scamming > How to Sell A WoW Account > scam > scammer > Scamming > scams > Sælg WoW account
The Auction House Scam
Posted on | January 16, 2010 | No Comments
The
Auction House scam comes in various sizes and shapes. Each variant abuses the system on a different level. On a very basic level, the scam merely monopolizes and drives up prices in the Auction House. More devious and advanced scams are capable of actually – and very directly – defrauding other players.
The basic Auction House scam that many people utilize is completely within the game rules set by Blizzard. The scam is innocent enough in that it only involves manipulating the in-game economy a bit. This basic variant is pretty easily detectable. All you need to do is keep track of prices and values in the Auction Houses across different realms. By having a general overview and impression of what an item costs, you’ll easily be able to single out prices which seem incongruous or out of place.
The scam can be broken into a few steps. The first step is in the gray area of what can be defined as scamming, contrary to later steps.
Scammers often use rare items as an items bait efficiency rises exponentially with rarity. Let’s use Silk Cloth as an example. The scammer purchases all Silk Cloth on the Auction House (perhaps 4-5 stacks). This is to ensure he or she is the only one selling Silk Cloth. With this power the scammer is efficiently capable of setting the price of Silk Cloth to whatever he or she pleases. Keep in mind, this is not what I would describe as an actual malicious scam. I would rather define it as creative use of an in-game mechanism.
After the scammer has gained full control of the market, there is a series of scams available to make sure the items are sold quickly and at the asked price. One scam is to hotlink an item that they do not have in the trade channel. The item could be an epic or blue weapon or similar. The scammer then offers to trade the epic weapon for a random number of Silk Cloth.
Hopefully this will send atleast one player rushing to the Auction House to buy the requested amount of Silk Cloth. When the buyer then whispers the scammer, he or she simply states that the item has already been traded.
This post will be updated regularly as new variants emerge.
Tags: Avoid Scammers > cataclysm-scam > cataclysm-scamming > scam > scammer > Scamming > scams > World of Warcraft
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