Virtual Theft in the news

[Jordy]

Came across this while looking through news earlier...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/10207486.stm
http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2010/06/01/virtual-thefts-from-the-habbo-hotel-spark-real-world-investigation/
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20100601/tod-finnish-police-probe-theft-of-virtua-879dccc.html


Finnish police are investigating up to 400 cases of theft, with some members reporting the loss of up to €1000 (£840) worth of virtual furniture and other items, according to Detective Sergeant Marko Levonen. "We have done five home searches in five cities in Finland," he said.

This is not the first time Habbo Hotel, which allows users to meet friends and buy virtual goods, has been targeted.

In 2007, a Dutch teenager was arrested for allegedly stealing virtual furniture worth thousands of euros on the site, which is believed to have more than 100 million registered "avatars".

People reporting to the police about being hacked or scammed on Habbo. Not the first time but attracting media attention never the less.

[marriott0.01]

Funniest article I've ever read. Seriously some people need to get over it. Things like this happen all the time, why waste the police's time.

[Kieran]

How sad.....

[Kyle]

lol at home searches as if they're gonna find some HCs stashed under the kitchen table or something

[Alkaz]

Funniest article I've ever read. Seriously some people need to get over it. Things like this happen all the time, why waste the police's time.
Hacking, stealing etc both real offences.

Good that they're finally making significant investigations.

[Jordy]

Not really convinced it's worth their time, most Habbo's are asking for it they so easily give away their details. If users are getting keylogged or something, I think that is quite serious and worthy of an investigation but people shouting out their passwords and falling for dodgy websites really aren't worthy of the Polices time.

The police wouldn't investigate a burglary very seriously if you left the front door open, so why bother investigating these?

[.shawty]

well, hopefully sulake/habbo staff see this in the paper, and a light bulb goes off, telling them they need to make changes.
after all, its not the kids that read newspapers, its the adults, and they will no longer buy credits for there children for fear of losing money to scammers.
in other words, habbo is just going to start losing alot of money over it, if they dont do something soon.
and its not just finland, its every hotel.
after the merge, theres probably going to be even more scamming.
i also hope that, every scammer that reads those articles, will realize, that a ban on habbo isnt the only consequnce they might have to deal with, but also jail time or being sued.
as much as we all love habbo, we can all agree, there are some major issues.

[Accipiter]

lol at home searches as if they're gonna find some HCs stashed under the kitchen table or something

Onoes, they're gunna find mah habbo skateboardzzzz

gunna go read it now, i need a good laugh.

[Mathew]

I agree with Jordy here. In majority of cases, it's the user's fault for falling into the scammer's trap. Not really worth polices time unless they are actually taking real money.. imo.

[Accipiter]

they're not talking about direct habbo scams, they're talking about those that can lead to pay pal acc's etc.

thing i found funny was:


A representative from Sulake was not immediately available for comment.

is there ever a habbo staff immediately available ever?

"Please use the HHT Tool"

[.shawty]

but mathew, there are many ways to scam. sometimes, its not there fault at all, or they dont have proper knowledge of how people scam, especally younger children
with all the new ways to scam/hack. it could happen to any of us.
simply going on the wrong website, opening an email. its not hard to do.
and all furni, starts with someone spending real money, it aint cheap either.
people need to be more aware, of how to avoid getting scammed, they need to better read up on it.
plus, its not like you can scam by saying "give me your pw for furni" or "if you type your pw it comes out like this ****). 98% of habbos know now that its untrue,
aswell as the "go to this site type in your pw for free credits". most are aware that is a scam to.
and since, none of these old ideas are working, people are resorting to programs/hacking ect..
and its not kids doing it, its teenagers and adults.. i mean, a child would have to be pretty smart to know how to do it properly.
so in most cases, i disagree, its not the user's fault, but i do agree they need to be more careful, and read up about scamming

[Accipiter]

i disagree shawty, the hackers who target people DO aim for there emails, or recently have used the Habbo ID hole with ip's.

But they should know not to visit piczo's etc just cause someone tells them to, they should know .tk sites are hacks, they should know personal info will get them hacked. But they all keep doing it.

People fall into a false sense of security when really they're just reeling out the bait.

[Special]

Pretty sad, but i don't blame them

it's Sulakes responsibility to look after it's players, even more so when it involves real money. If Sulake can't keep up to that responsibility, the players are obviously going to go elsewhere - the police

[Accipiter]

Don't see why sulake care anyways "All of habbo's furniture is property of sulake"

so if the users get hacked by trojans etc they don't care. But if it was a flaw in habbo's side they'd have to refund.

[Special]

Don't see why sulake care anyways "All of habbo's furniture is property of sulake"

so if the users get hacked by trojans etc they don't care. But if it was a flaw in habbo's side they'd have to refund.

If furni gets stolen by any method & by any user, it's always Sulakes fault one way or another. If they user entered their password into a phisher site, it's Sulakes responsability to educate the players more about the dangers of this. If someone pretended to be a different user with sufficent amounts of furni, it's again Sulakes responsability to look into individual cases more. Incidents that involve money should be taken seriously

[Accipiter]

Why should sulake have to educate us of this?

They do try, but its not there job to do this, they aren't a public service charity, they're an online community.

[.shawty]

Sulake should care, unless they dont care what happens to habbo, and dont need any more money.
altho that money they do have, they might want to use it, to make habbo safer, or they are going to be flat broke,
when they end up getting sued ( depending on the situation).
you read the news, and theres nothing good to say about habbo anymore,

[LoveToStack]

The articles are hilarious.

"We've seen Dutch hackers, Italians, Russians and others, and have investigated some of these cases previously with the company that runs Habbo."

Who would have known these cyber mastermind criminals could be so exotic?! They hype it up so much. Reference was made to the "hundreds of other users targetted" but if you ask any habbo loser worth his salt he'll tell you how he was komput0r hacked when he didn't get paid in a game of falling furni or some crap. I think they write these articles with the intention that the general public read them and get the idea that everyone playing these mmorpgs are fat whiny kids who can't go outside because the sun's too bright.
Saying that a guy was stabbed over a "dragon sabre" doesn't really send across the right message.

[Accipiter]

yes, a 13 year old kid will successfully sue a million pound cooperation with a bog standard lawyer? great thinking.

Sulake do care, they have went out of there way in the past few months with new features to keep us safe, one is definitely habbo I.D although its one major flaw is, once they've got that they've got access to all your acc's password or none. But that could be done before, just with a little extra time.

[2uettottanta]

Oh good. Some fat, sweaty teenagers are getting their virtual furniture back and they're lives will be 0.000000000000001% better. Now I can finally sleep soundly tonight.

[MrPinkPanther]

You learn by making mistakes. Better to make these mistakes with "furni" now than doing it with credit card information later in life.

[sammy]

I don't think this is ridiculous at all, if people have spent a lot of money on Habbo and someone steals it, it's theft. It's like stealing a TV from someone's home? Both are theft.

Glad to see they're tackling down on it :).

[Accipiter]

but its also like leaving your key under a brick and then telling a friend who then tells others, then one day one of there friends decides to rob your house because they know were your key is.

[AgnesIO]

lol at home searches as if they're gonna find some HCs stashed under the kitchen table or something

Strangely that's what I thought! Couldn't they have just took his pc lol

[hah]

my house got raided and they found 20 bags of credits under my bed

[Starburst..x]

If you have paid something over the internet and someone steals it, of course it's theft. Okay yeah some people say it's only virtual but I'm pretty sure if you were to see quite a bit of moneys worth disappear you'd be quite upset, regardless of whether it's virtual or real. These people have paid money for it, so what gives anyone the right to take it?
I'm not talking about the habbo furni as such, but more to do with the money thats used to pay for it.

[lorren]

lol at home searches as if they're gonna find some HCs stashed under the kitchen table or something

***** CANT BREATHE AT THIS!

and wow pretty desperate, guess if you spent so much you'd want money..

[gta3chatterbox]

I think "Sulake Caring" is stretching abit far. At the end of the day, its a million dollar company, the only thing they "care" about is making sure none of the blame can be put onto them.. which is why they have improved security to an extent, e.g Habbo ID (love it or hate it)

The news article, or any police action isn't going to take any precedent. How many people have their furni stolen from them daily (9 times out of 10 users fault) and nothing will ever be fixed. You will never get that furni back, because Sulake aren't going to go out of their way to trace which IP was on the account, where the furni got traded too and all that.

We all know from experience how useless Sulake/Habbo are and how nothing gets fixed. The CFH tool is a complete joke, we all know that for a fact, and nobody is willing to actually go forward and do something REAL about it. Remember all the 1 Credit For 1 Credit joke? People were making forums on fan sites and flooding habbo with protests on how they where going to goto Sulake HQ and complain with an angry fist, and how it isn't fair.. But you gave it a week, and now everybody has accepted it, and we are all still playing Habbo, despite the Thousandssss of people saying "YA I HATE THIS! ITS STEALING FROM KIDS! AM LEAVING!"

This news article is one of those you see every blue moon, some bored editor with nothing to write about. You wont read any follow up to this story, and nothing will be done about it. And give it a weeks time, we would all of forgotten, and people will continue to be 'hacked' and they will continue to carry on playing Habbo.

[Andii]

How sad.....

lol did u not tell me you reported this??? :P:P

its actually such a funny artical :L:L

[ShineAway]

http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/2127/hcstash.png
:D

[Jxhn]

I don't think this is ridiculous at all, if people have spent a lot of money on Habbo and someone steals it, it's theft. It's like stealing a TV from someone's home? Both are theft.

Glad to see they're tackling down on it :).

It's not like stealing a TV from someones home. In the T&Cs it states that all furniture belongs to sulake. It's more like going to a real hotel and moving furniture from one room to another. Noone actually loses or gains anything.

[Tintinnabulate]

Most habbos who get hacked via phishing scams, its their own fault for going on them to get "free credits".

[immense]

http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/2127/hcstash.png
:D

LMAOOOOOOOOOOO OMG

CRYING WITH LAUGHTERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

[sammy]

It's not like stealing a TV from someones home. In the T&Cs it states that all furniture belongs to sulake. It's more like going to a real hotel and moving furniture from one room to another. Noone actually loses or gains anything.

Firstly, I have never heard of a hotel in which you buy the furniture. The furniture in a real life hotel is already supplied by the owner of the hotel, whereas on Habbo you buy the furniture with your real life money, so that comment is ridiculous. And about the comment in bold, the hacker obviously gains the furni and the hackee loses it.

[Gibs960]

lol at home searches as if they're gonna find some HCs stashed under the kitchen table or something
LOL, But if someone has spent hundreds maybe thousands, I can understand why they've got the police involved, most likely the police will get in touch with a computer expert of some sort :)

[Jxhn]

Firstly, I have never heard of a hotel in which you buy the furniture. The furniture in a real life hotel is already supplied by the owner of the hotel, whereas on Habbo you buy the furniture with your real life money, so that comment is ridiculous. And about the comment in bold, the hacker obviously gains the furni and the hackee loses it.

The only point when anyone loses anything is when they pay for credits. They can't lose or gain furniture they don't own.
You don't buy the furniture in habbo, you pay to have it in your room. There's a difference, if you owned it then you could sell it.

[leer34$]

.... and everyone wonders why the prices are going crazy.

[Santorefish]

lol at home searches as if they're gonna find some HCs stashed under the kitchen table or something
LMAO xD
Can i see your wallet ... hmm where did you get those gold bars from?

[Frisky]

It's still stealing. A Lot of you would change your views if you had your items stolen.

[Hessian]

It's still stealing. A Lot of you would change your views if you had your items stolen.

It is, but it's virtual, I really don't understand why the Police need to be involved, surely Sulake should just be able to reverse any transaction (with suitable proof of course)

[JACKTARD]

If they're gna to investigations with stuff online, they should get rid of paedophiles before stopping hackers imo