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 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.

With this in mind, here are some particularly useful posts for you – handpicked by yours truly:

http://youraccountseller.com/2009/10/21/7-surefire-ways-to-avoid-scammers

http://youraccountseller.com/2009/10/28/google-has-great-memory/

So far 14 people have bought my book, each paying $5 on average. That’s the beauty of the ‘pay what you like’-principle. Anyone can afford to read it, which means the word will be spread like light fire. Some have responded back telling me their opinion, which is greatly appreciated. This way I can keep adjusting the book so it meets the high standards of my readers. You can catch up on what the readers think here.

The entries are from the iPod Touch contest have been really interesting so far. Entries are still welcomed, so what are you waiting for?

A forum has also been added to the site, located here; YourAccountSeller.com Forums!

Scammers are normal people too. Some of them use their own e-mail addresses and information, solely relying on the fact that you live too far away to do anything about it. Or else they presume your a fat nerd, completely impaired from the waist down. Whatever the case may be, they use their real information.

In other cases, the scammer will go by an alias. This makes it increasingly difficult to use Google searches in any significant way.

Most of the time it can be hard to figure out whether a scammer is using his own or made up information, so my advice is clear cut: Always, always, do a Google search on the person you’re dealing with. Use his e-mail, full name, address and username as your search strings. Take some time to go through the results.

If the results come out negative (to put it in biological terms, woah!) you’re one step closer to a successful trade.

So remember: Use Google before you buy or sell your account!

PayPal scam gaining popularity
This scam is increasingly popular because of the way PayPal’s system is constructed. Dealing with virtual property, which is the category MMORPG accounts fall under, it is increasingly difficult for a seller to prove he’s actually sold and delivered the said goods. The scammers of course know this and exploit it to the fullest extent.

The way the scam works is as follows: Buyer finds a suitable account and makes arrangements with seller. Seller sends payment to buyer, buyer accepts and thus hands over the account information. Everything is blissfull for a while, as both parties have been satisfied. All of a sudden, the buyer checks his e-mail only to find a dispute has been opened by the buyer. The buyer claims he’s never received the goods he has paid for. PayPal tries to figure out what happened and requests the seller to submit proper documentation: Such as a freight form or other documentation which serves to prove the seller has filled his end of the bargain. Of course, having traded virtual property, no such documentation exists. The buyer ends up with an empty PayPal account and no MMORPG account either. At the same time, if the seller has transferred the funds directly to his bank account – and converted the money into a diferent currency – the seller will be stuck with the additional fees.

Little can be done to avoid it
With the regard to avoiding this scam, little can be done. Some people suggest taking screenshots and taking various countermeasures to avoid the situation. But having struggled with PayPal for a number of years, I know for a fact, that little can be done to avoid disputes opened by dishonest buyers.

I recommend demanding security in the shape of valid information on your buyer, before you even get to the PayPal transaction part of a trade. Everyone has a phone number and an address – and if they don’t, you can be sure you have a scammer on your hands.

Good luck out there and remember – You can avoid a lot of similar headaches by buying my book.