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.

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

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

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.

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.

The thing about Western Union is that payments are in no way traceable or accountable. The underlying system behind Western Union was crafted so people could send money to friends, relatives and trusted recipients ONLY. This is a well documented fact and Western Union even have it written on their website: “The service a great way to send money to someone you know and trust but if you need to send money to someone you don’t know well you may be putting yourself at risk of fraud.” In my opinion this sums up exactly why you shouldn’t be using Western Union as a means of expediting funds to someone you’ve never met.

Accepting a Wester Union payment requires no proof of identity but solely relies on a ‘pre-established code’. This code is what proves your right to the funds. So in essence, anyone who has this code in their possession is entitled to the funds connected to it. Anyone with the requisite recipient information can claim the funds as cash and vanish! This is the exact reason why so many scammers use Western Union as their payment method of choice. To my knowledge, the only known means of checking the identity of the person drawing the funds is to contact Western Union to see whether the branch had a CCTV record which could be passed to your local police department. This would require you to file a complaint first, and as the amounts are usually small, a lot of people simply don’t bother. It’s always worth it though, perhaps not to your own personal case but it could build up a picture of the scammer, if he pulls the same stunt on a lot of different people.

A Western Union transfer as I’ve described it sounds like a pretty horrible thing, but it isn’t. It’s great for the purpose which it has always been intended to serve. Worth noting however is that you should never, never, never use Western Union to send money to someone you’ve never met and isn’t directly related to.

Phishers adapt to the environment and current trends. Even the slightest speculation about a new World of Warcraft beta always spawn hundreds of phishing sites. As always, the quality of these sites vary. Some are hardly believable while others appear very real. Another scam related to beta opt-ins is the premature sale of beta keys.

Let’s make something completely sure: The Cataclysm expansion is no-where near release. Educated guesses indicate we’ll see an Alpha version in the first quarter of 2010. The Alpha is not open to the public and it is impossible to opt-in, regardless of what anyone tries to persuade you. Naturally, the Cataclysm Beta will be publicly available at some point and when it does, the word will come centrally from Blizzard.

To increase safety, I can recommend the Blizzard Authenticator. It comes in both a Mobile version and a physical version. An authenticator is worth every penny.

As usual, MMOwned delivers. Please find below an example of a fake Cataclysm Beta e-mail and also be sure to read my post on avoiding fake e-mails from Blizzard.

Q: World of Warcraft: Cataclysm – Closed Beta

A: Blizzard Entertainment would like to present to you the World of
Warcraft: Cataclysm Closed Beta!

If you are looking at this page, you are one of the special few who will
recieve FREE invites to the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Closed Beta.
You will be able to transfer one (1) of your current characters onto
our Closed Beta realm and embark on the epic journey against the
dreaded Deathwing!

All participants of the Closed Beta must confirm their account by
typing their account information at the link on the bottom of this
page, so that we can verify if you are currently a subscriber to
the World of Warcraft. An e-mail will be dispatched to you, providing
further information about the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Closed Beta.

Power leveling is a service like so many others in the same category, such as arena boosting, raid boosting and plain, simple gold and/or item grinding. It’s a service that requires you to invest a lot of confidence in your counterpart, as the service can’t be performed without handing over your account information.
So-called anti-scam experts claim the easiest way is to simply avoid buying boosting services in the first place. This is sound advice because it is logically correct. Crossing a red light is generally a bad idea too, but let’s stick to reality. People do buy boosting services and people do cross red lights even though they know it may prove unwise.

I recommend you always stick to professional boosting service suppliers. The reason for this is simple. You’ll have the entire process on record: Your order, your agreement with the supplier and your payment. At the same time, paying by credit card ensures you the rights and amenities associated with online purchases of this nature. Another plus of using a professional supplier is that the agreement is clear-cut.’
When browsing the market for a power leveling service, or any other boosting service, my post on using Google in your research is relevant. Chances are other people have had experiences with the company you’re considering, so why not use the information?

The YouTube scam is in most cases so poorly executed that anyone with above average intelligence will see right through them. The spelling is horrible, the story is predictable and the suggested methods often make no sense at all.

That being said, I’m writing this post on them anyway, just so you’re covered in all aspects of scamming. YouTube scams mostly offer solutions in the following categories: Hacking other people’s WoW accounts; receiving or generating free game cards; receiving or generating codes for rare pets and mounts (spectral tiger being one the most popular ones) and receiving some sort of attractive gear/item for free. Of course, it’s all non-sense. Blizzard has stated on several occasions that they only use their official channel for promotional purposes.

To my knowledge there exists no programs that are able to artificially create items, mounts, gold or game cards. No is there any method to hack other people’s WoW accounts, unless you the information is handed over by (or phished out of) the user.

Below is a prime example of how far the scammers are willing to go, to scam you of your account.

Basically every single video in this list on YouTube is fake. They serve no other purpose than to lure you into sending your account name and password to them.

So where do the scammers come up with these methods? is a prime location. Although the site has officially gone white hat – or legal in layman’s terms – the members are still the same scammers they were before. The people “helping out” on MMOwned are the exact same people who’ve been orchestrating scams ever since World of Warcraft was released.

where a user describes the GameCard Generator scam in detail.

Here’s another thread describing how you can manipulate the views your YouTube scam video gets, to get a higher rank in the search results.

Scamming people online is easier than scamming people in real life, because the scammer typically never comes face-to-face with the victim. While online, the scammer is also able to distance himself from his wrongdoings. By adopting various aliases, as in the case of kwaidan, the scammer is able to unlink his real self from his criminal alter ego.

If you are interested in learning more about social engineering , I suggest buying my book.

According to the Wikipedia definition, social engineering is broken loosely into the following categories:

1. Pretexting
2. Phishing
3. Baiting
4. Quid pro quo

I will try to explain how the different categories are related to the way most scammers go about conning people into giving out sensitive account information. I will mostly concentrate on those methods I have found to be particularly common in relation to online scamming.

Pretexting: Pretexting is defined as the act of creating and using an invented scenario to persuade a targeted victim to release information or perform an action. From a scammers point of view, pretexting is about shaping the way a victim views, understands and interprets the scammer’s actions. If I tell you I am an authority on something, you are more likely to believe what I am saying to be true. If I tell you I have done this many times before without ever encountering any problems, you are more likely to accept my future proposals. Why wouldn’t you? It has obviously worked for a lot of people before.

Pretexting is also used by scammers to shape a certain character. I’ve heard of cases in which the scammer took on the role of a father with kids. The scammer pulled it off so convincingly that most of his victims had no worries handing over their account information. The scammer seemed so trustworthy and honest. The defninition continues: “Pretexting can also be used to impersonate co-workers, police, bank, tax authorities, or insurance investigators — or any other individual who could have perceived authority or right-to-know in the mind of the targeted victim. The pretexter must simply prepare answers to questions that might be asked by the victim. In some cases all that is needed is a voice that sounds authoritative, an earnest tone, and an ability to think on one’s feet.”

Phishing: We’ve been over this one before. Phishing is a technique of fraudulently obtaining private information. Typically, the phisher sends an e-mail that appears to come from a legitimate business—a bank, or credit card company—requesting “verification” of information and warning of some severe consequences if it is not provided.

Quid pro quo: Something for something. This is often a method used by middle men. The scammer will help you solve a problem and in return demand some sort of information. In relation to account trading, the middle men often acts as a secure link between a buyer and a seller. However, as witnessed so many times, the middle man often succumbs to temptation and abuses the trust confided in him. In other reported cases, the middle man will try to black mail one side of the trade – typically once he has secured valuable information.

You can read much more about social engineering here. It will definitely open your eyes to the devious ways of a scammer. Through education we can hopefully bring down the number of victims dramatically.