Stupidity within the MMO-scene

On the first point I believe Anet has done all it can do to keep people aware. From login screen notices, to web site notices, to the print on my keycodes. There are only so many ways to tell a person to "Buckle-up"; The rest is up to the player no matter how many signs you put in their faces. We unfortunately live in a MMO world where account sharing and trading between "buddies" is more common than people realize.

You're right though, there is no final solution and no perfect ending. However, while others don't, I do encourage Game makers to go after those who purposely decieve and scam, just as I believe they should go after botters. Compare the amount of gold spamming bots, or bot users, here in guild wars to a place like Cabal, or Scions, or 2moons, where you have dozens spamming at once....it goes to show Anets combative stance against it is a lot better for the community.

No, you can't get rid of all scammers just like you can never fully rid a game of bots. However, the developers, GM's, CR's, or any other title, show the community you mean business in keeping a safe community, you provide a track record of dealing out severe punishment to offenders. If people looking to scam know they have a high chance of losing everything themselves (account) then you curb the behavior and lower the risk.

I find it unfortunate to blame the victim. No one deserves to be taken advantage of in this game. I would never even want my worst in game enemy to be taken advantage of. I don't think a 14 year old who just installed this game and doesn't have the 6+ month experience level deserves to be taken advantage of. We should be protecting each other, not preying on each other. Irregardless of the circumstance, blaming the victim creates the atmosphere of, "I can get away with it because people will blame the victim and not me!" and that encourages others to take up the status of scammer.


We must remember that while a lot of us here have years and years of online gaming experience, there are others who don't. While many of us have dozens upon dozens of games under out belts, there are many out there who are playing Guild Wars as their first try in the MMO world. Reminders such as the one currently posted on our login screen is a good way to remind us long term players, teach the new players, and update everyone on new techniques deceptive players are attempting.

I play in Spanish, and it didn't come up on the Spanish one. Probably because the videos were in English? (I'm not Spanish... it's just good practice seeing as I'm learning it :P.)

Maybe Master Togo should teach account safety along with how to wand monsters to death (I never actually did the factions tutorial... I knew how to c+spacebar ^_^.)

Sonata ftw for her very well thought out post (and the fact that they're a mesmer ).

Wow...this is truly the trend in society. You see it more and more nowadays...to focus more on placing blame on the victim of a crime rather than on the criminal or the consequences that they should face.

You see it in rape cases all the time...

"Well, she shouldn't have been dressed that way, so I guess she deserved it."

"What was she thinking jogging alone at night? Man, that's asking for trouble."

Or in robbery cases...

"Didn't he look around the parking lot for suspicious individuals before he approached his car?"

"Why would he wear such an expensive watch in that bad neighborhood? He should've known better."

Geez. Yes, each of these individuals, in retrospect, could have done something that could have reduced the potential for having the crime committed against them. But saying that "well, I guess they paid for their actions and/or stupidity, and making them whole for their loss doesn't teach them a lesson" is one of the worst thoughts out there in society today. The primary focus of any crime should always be on:

1. Identifying and apprehending the criminal.
2. Implementing severe enough consequences to deter the criminal from doing the crimer in the first place.
3. Educating potential victims of the crime and ways to help prevent the crime in the future.

We've seen a good amount of focus on #3 from A-Net, but I'm afraid that we haven't seen hardly any of #1 or #2 from A-Net, especially with the "formal" responses we've seen related to attempted or successful thefts of accounts and/or items. We've seen a ton of #2 by the community, but those reports are always subject to the scrutiny that is placed by posters such as the OP.

yes. Somethings are out of your control. And thats not your fault.
But a lot things are in your control. A lot of things are your decision.

If you make decisions while misinformed, or being deceived is it your fault?
If you continue to protect someone to the point where they have no responsibility, are you simply creating more potential victims and merely delaying their victimization?

We can keep trying to point the blame at somebody, but that doesn't change the fact that as individuals, we still need to be wary for ourselves.

Even if its NOT your fault. Then NEXT time you should be more aware. If anything, its a lesson in life. And Guild Wars accounts are a very cheap price to pay to learn important lessons.

It reminds me of those disclaimers they put on stuff: "do not use while sleeping" (hairdryer), "do not attempt to eat" (on a mattress), "do not iron clothes on your body" (iron). This kinda disclaimer is there because someone was dumb enough to do it.

These videos go by one law: if it looks too easy to do, there's a trap. I'll relate it to a common thing in GW: there's an empty field on a map and when you get there, there's a pop-up.

Thought it was an obvious fake just from that, and I wonder how people can still fall for that kinda stuff.

EDIT: Tell someone "not to go there" and see him going there anyways, just outta curiosity. Let him learn his lessons... I've learned mine, LOL. (Wasn't GW-related, but I still have people laughing at me for a video I watched despite everyone telling me not to).

quick sign up now for gw2 beta all i need is your username and pw ;P

/facepalm

some people are more gullible than others. and in a MMO where the average age is probably something like 16-17, account thefts are going to happen. period.

Some people honestly don't know. Yes, people are dumb and make stupid mistakes, but those stupid mistakes might be from inexperience.

Of course, once you know about them, you shouldn't fall for the same thing. If people have taken the effort to warn you and you STILL do it, then that's your fault. If a full-grown adult climbs into the lion enclosure despite repeated warnings NOT to do so, you can't take responsibility. I mean, he was told.

In either case, however, scamming is not acceptable.

so to reiterate:

Even if everything in this thread is true... and people are really just stupid and complain about getting hacked too much...

I think the OP is dumb for typing such a long rant. Honestly, go walk in a park or something and let the QQ'ers continue to QQ. You aren't going to stop them. I already learned that when we tried to stop the massive influx of GW2 threads in Riverside.

Depends on the magnitude of the crime, doesn't it? I mean, if your school-age child reveals to a bully that they have $20, gets smacked around a bit and loses the $20, and comes home to you with this problem, you should pursue the issue with the school. If justice is served, great, but more than likely either the $20 is lost or the bully isn't even punished (depending on the evidence). One can consider this to be a horrible injustice, or one can consider this to be a valuable learning experience. The child learns a couple of facts of life here: the justice system isn't always out to protect you and it rarely makes you whole after you are victimized, so you are much better off taking care of yourself by not revealing the existence of the $20.

The violations you're talking about are much higher-stakes affairs than the above example. I suspect that most posters taking the "don't be a n00b and you won't get scammed" attitude consider getting your GW account hacked in the category of the "minor injustice, learning experience" rather than the "major injustice with severe consequences" category. You'd rather have your child learn how to avoid internet malfeasance by getting their GW account hacked than by falling for a credit card phishing scam later in life, right?

This hardly makes what scammers are doing right; I'd be much happier if each of them would agree to go make the world a better place by lighting themselves on fire, thus removing one more sociopath from our wonderful planet. Since the sociopaths won't do this, the second-best solution is for people to learn how to avoid scams when playing at the low-stakes poker table so that later on in life they don't fall for them when playing at the high-stakes poker table.

At least ANet is attempting to let players know what the scam of the week is. Certainly I'd prefer a better justice system, but that just isn't going to happen given the low level of resources ANet is willing to devote to resolving such complaints. The best thing to do here is accept reality, be grateful that ANet isn't enforcing the law, and let it go. Or find a game where the dev team is willing to develop a consistent, clear set of conduct rules and invest the resources to enforce them fairly.

Its people like this that makes the Guru community look like a lot babbling idiots. Anyone thinking police don't bother with crimes for $20 have absolutely no grasp on reality. Especially when the crime also involves extortion.

The idiots in this case are the above poster and previous that think that the victim was at fault.

Maybe you haven't heard of the Rules of Conduct, or the EULA, its their "consistent, clear set of conduct rules". Also PlayNC are the ones enforcing it, which they do a pretty good job if people use the /report or submit a question on their web site..

By all means go ahead and set yourself on fire, you're doing the world a favor by ridding it of one moronic scumbag.

Social engineering is by far the true skill of real hackers - not leet coding skills.

So technically, these people are "hackers". That just doesn't mean they are some nerdy pimply kids living in a basement typing leet code.

No it doesn't. There's a minimum amount in proven damages before it becomes a crime. I think it's on the order of $1 mil in damages.

Anything less, and you often can't even report it to police, or at least, they can't do anything about it, and can't even delegate it to higher instances responsible for such crimes (FBI for example).

This was proven consistently in much more serious attacks and extortions against ISPs and website owners.

Long story short - if your account gets hacked, and you lose $1000 or $5000 equivalent, just suck it up. Any other option you have will never repay back the costs of civil process.

It might be a learning experience, but it's still a jackass move in my humble opinion.

email: [email protected]
password: id33ut.

sign me up in a hurry!!
please don't hack me people

















*yeah that's not real*

In a hotel room:

On the ceiling, next to the sprinkler, was a little notice that suggested you aren't supposed to use the sprinkler to hang your clothes.

The thing is, no matter how many notices Anet puts up, people are still going to fall for the same old scams over and over again. Why? Because a good amount of the people who get scammed are the immature kids with next to no attention span. They seek immediate gratification at all costs and refuse to listen to warning.

That's the difference between online scamming and real life crime. With real life crime, you can't say about a murder victim "Oh, he was walking around that place unarmed... he got what he deserved..." without looking like a complete ass. Murder/rape/theft victims never ask for a crime to happen to them, it is 100% the fault of the perpetrator in most cases..

However with the matter of online games, I think that people who get scammed had it coming. If you went to a website that said "Free Guild Wars gold, just give us your account name/password and we'll deliver it right away" and signed up for it, you fully deserve to have your account stolen.

People that dumb deserve to be scammed. Really. There's a difference between getting hacked unexplainably, but that's an entirely different story.

/win

I couldn't have said it any better, great post.

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Now playing on Windows Media Player: Face to Face - Burden

It is human nature to try and get something for nothing. Look at the banking industry. There is a scam out there that says that you just one 100000 from an offshore countries lottery. Just cash this check for 4700 dollars and send us 2500 dollars for the taxes and we will send you the check for the rest.

So you cash the check and send real money and you are out cause the check comes back to the bank in 3 weeks cause that is how long it takes for the check to come back. The 10 day hold falls off before the check is clear so you send the money and you are out of 2500 bucks.

It is crazy. people do not think they just want what they did not earn or they FEEl they deserve.

If you are like me and have to work for everything you get in guildwars because you did not get a panda that you can sell for all the gold you will ever need then you covet the things that you earned.

the question is why once an account is hacked and stuff sold and there has been a report can the IP address not be traced and then blocked. At least this will make the site more secure.

Wow how stupid can people get? So anyone stealing under $1 mil isn't committing a crime? I'm sure everyone that has been arrested for a misdemeanor would like to have known that. Especially since that's usually under $400 in damages. There's also court costs which are added to a sentence which covers the cost of prosecuting the violator. So your fairy tale logic of prosecuting crimes for $1000 or $5000 not being worth it is complete nonsense.

I'd be willing to wager that you could easily be scammed by even a novice grifter if you were taken by surprise.

Motes eyes and specks and all that.

For all the griping and chest-thumping in this thread about how stupid these people are, how many of you have given out your social security number to a company that put it into a database?

Yea? Are you stupid, then? When someone steals that, do I get to call you a moron and say you deserved having your identity stolen?

People learn by experience. If you don't have a lot of experience with people trying to scam you, or with trying to protect other people from being scammed, you're likely to be a prime target for scamming. Likewise, they make tradeoffs to get what they want. People will happily cough up all sorts of personal information to get a credit card or car loan they don't need because they're willing to assume the risk of exposing that personal information for some added convenience in their life.

Not that I'd expect a typical MMO player to have a whole lot of sense or maturity, present company not the least bit excluded, but I'll say it anyway: stop being such knobs about it and try to have a little bit more reasonable a perspective on how these things really play out when it comes to human psychology and experience.

Indeed, how stupid and uninformed. Show me a criminal trial that prosecuted someone for intellectual property damages of $100. Please do - they are public. Game accounts are just that.

Police has no means to deal with that, and FBI doesn't touch if it doesn't exceed certain sum.

All that's left is civil court, which means you need to pay for just about everything, including tracking down the people involved. Search for court cases involving such damages.

You stated that crimes under $1 million aren't prosecuted. You didn't state anything about intellectual property in your previous post. Either way you couldn't be more wrong, read http://www.cybercrime.gov/cccases.html There are many cases for 5k, some probably less. Your logic of game accounts being public property is even more stupid than the op's post. Its your own personal account to use, unless your dumb enough to share it with people. Anet/PlayNC can take away your right to use it, but otherwise its yours to use.

Despite you're wearing an offensive avatar (kidding, of course.. :P), that right there won the entire argument.

It doesn't matter if a man has his car running with doors wide open, that doesn't mean there's an invitation for the car to be taken by a thief; stealing is WRONG!

It also doesn't matter if a woman is stark naked, lying on the grass with her legs spread open, if she doesn't give a man her permission to have sex with her, and he does so anyway, it's still rape, and rape is WRONG!

Saying someone deserves his or her account stolen just because he or she gave that account information away is like saying those people in the above examples deserved to have his car stolen or for her to be raped. Account stealing is still stealing, and as you know, STEALING IS WRONG! Could there have been preventive measures to restrict the crime? Yes, there could have.

I wouldn't want anyone's account information to be stolen, even if someone blatantly entered that information in a website that's obviously trying to steal the information.