Sobering Article on Account Theft

[Aeni]

I found this article that really strikes at the heart of the rash of account thefts that's been going around in FFXI. What really suprises me is the cold attitude affronted by Square Enix customer service. I would've thought better of them.

The Escapist : Someone Stole My Magic Sword

This isn't really a thread about what you should do (which any player with common sense should not have to be told about) but what happens if you are placed in that situation.

[eticket109]

Re: Sobering Article on Account Theft

I stopped reading when they started talking about someone who got hacked in December. Times have changed and people are getting accounts back, and all their gear. I agree that SE was horrendously slow with learning how to handle lost accounts but they're finally getting it right. The author of that piece is pretty damned late to the party. It'd be nice if she updated the info regarding their policies but if she took the time to do so, then she'd have to realize that SE had already started to do most of the shit she bitched about them not doing.

For instance...

Square Enix has a seven-day time limit on the return of stolen online goods.

Way to follow up on your research there.


Also... lol at having 22 viruses... and then installing protection. Sure, nothing is absolute, but maybe if she had installed that stuff before and not after then she wouldn't have an issue. Sure, that doesn't absolve SE of being assholes, but at least they seemed to learn eventually.

Also... this thread again? really?

[Kailea]

Re: Sobering Article on Account Theft

yes agreed.....


I myself am getting tired of hearing crying about lost accounts. when 90% of the times is the users fault anyway, then they bitch at SE because their account was not returned in 5 seconds.....

*yawn*

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Sobering Article on Account Theft

I think its a tad misleading to call it identity theft when the thief didn't steal or use any personal information, just simply changed it. I've been through real identity theft and if losing my online characters was the worst it got, I'd probably just move on from the game and not look back.

When someone runs up your credit cards and signs your name to legal documents, however, you want to know who they are, where they live and go beat them til thier mother can't recognize them anymore.

A lot of the article tries to portray this as SE's current situation, too, and I've heard quite a few accounts that contradict this story.

Internet journalism at its finest.

[fallenintoshadows]

Re: Sobering Article on Account Theft

Yeah a lot of the time, it is the users fault, but there are also times when it isn't.

All I know is I would hate to have my account hacked. Reading this has reminded me to perform a sweep on my hard-drive and that it's about time to change my password.

[BurningPanther]

Re: Sobering Article on Account Theft

Although the story is not recent, the scrutiny it garners might do well to keep S-E--as well as players--on their toes.

[Kitalrez]

Re: Sobering Article on Account Theft

You know, I understand the viewpoint you guys are taking that the policies this journalist is quoting are old and no longer reflect SE's business practices. That said, I hope people read this article. I further hope that it gets passed around, hyperlinked all over the place, and blackens SE's eye. Yes, I hope SE suffers because of something they've fixed. The reason I hope this is because of what they haven't fixed. We still don't really own anything. We rent characters, and that rental agreement frankly sucks.

The problem is the crux of that agreement we sign when we log on. It basically states that we don't own our characters, nor can they be traded for anything of value in the real world. This indemnifies SE from liability should things be destroyed, as well as making sure they have the authority to ban cheaters and prevent RMT activities. It's a nice system. It's also entirely too simplistic for the situations it's being applied to.

The contract is entirely too simple because it doesn't go into any specifics about what I do and do not own. It should. Hell, the damn thing should be 4-5 pages in length at least, and go into specifics about what I am and am not allowed to do. It doesn't because people don't want to spend money to legally defend all provisions of that, and they want room to punish people who might otherwise work that contract for their own benefit or challenge sections of it in court. This is an industry wide problem, not just SE. However, if you blacken enough eyes over things like this, perhaps the industry will wake up and start actually providing the massive agreement we actually need for MMOs instead of these little 2 page cop-outs.

Any good contract should at least give me:

1. Not full ownership, but at least "access rights" on a provisional basis, (provided I pay and don't break the rules), to my character(s). Provided I have the program installed and internet access somewhere, I should be able to access my character using my account information.

2. While I can't sell my account or RMT the items therein, if someone hacks me, that is a violation of these access rights to my account. I'm losing my ability to log on and enjoy the rights I own to my character. This should be punishable in court. If it was structured as "access rights" it probably could be. Since I have no contractual rights, SE owns it all, it isn't.

3. Access rights should extend to things I own within my character. Say I have a relic weapon or AF. They're not tradeable, but someone could maliciously toss everything. Now I'm being denied access to something in my account. Shouldn't I get recourse to recover those? What about tradeable items? Yeah, someone's RMTing my stuff, how come I can't get it back? Aren't I being denied access to stuff that's rightfully mine?


When someone RMT hacks you now, basically the following happens:
1. They change your info to get full access to the account. They're now paying for it, so SE considers them the owner until the hack was proven. This is reversable, but it lasts for long enough that the RMT has room to maneuver.
2. RMT sells or strips the account, then moves the money just made to a succession of disposable mules. This launders the money by making it hard to tell where it came from. Virtual currency is co-mingled with semi-legitimate gains, (like fishbots or craftbots), to make it more difficult to tell where it came from and which is the "honestly made" and "stolen" cash.
3. Buyer at RMT site pays money for the stolen cash, and then uses the stolen cash to buy legitimately made items on the AH or in bazaars.

Problem with doing a character rollback is always this: If you roll back a character, you introduce items into the game which are not legitimately gained, as well as inflating the amount of currency in that game. Tracking a series of transactions back to the source also makes this a time and labor intensive proposition.

Rollbacks really ought to be possible though, because if we had real "access rights" to our accounts, we'd have the rights to our stuff. Yes, it'd suck to be SE employees, but it'd make the hacked user happy. Let's say you do track that series of transactions back, though. You end up with gilbuyers on one end. Your rollback takes away their money and items, they're screwed... but shouldn't they be? They did violate the terms of service, and they are messing up the game. Why not say "fuck em" and screw them over?

Maybe what we ought to be doing is inserting more money sinks into the game... those Zeni NMs perhaps should lead to BCNM type things we can buy with actual gil. (Say 3-kings or the like). This way a rollback of one character doesn't immediately introduce millions of gil into the system that weren't there before. Conversely, you stop the rollback of items at the gilbuyer themselves. You let the record of those purchases remain, so the crafters still get money for what they've made, as do the item farmers and the like. You rollback their accounts to before they bought the gil, however. Any craft skills they gained and any items they've bought are no longer on their accounts. It's as if they ceased to play for whatever time was involved in the investigation. Maybe you ban them, maybe punishing them in this way, (losing even the legit things they gained before you finished the investigation), is enough. Hell, they just blew a few hundred dollars for nothing, that's a pretty good deterrent.

Fix the contract. Make it gigantic and actually worth reading. Give me real rights to things I pay for. I've sank several hundred bucks into this game since it started. I'd like something realistic for that. Not the bullshit agreement someone tossed up when they weren't sure the game would fly. It's not just SE that has these problems, the industry itself is riddled with them. You've got to start somewhere, though. Virtual items need to have some kind of value, even if it is just access to those items. No one addresses this right now, and it's sorely needed.

[Kailea]

Re: Sobering Article on Account Theft

Kitalrez..... every MMORPG or online game has this same, or very similer agreement. -.-

You dont own a bunch of 0s and 1s
That is the way its been since Ultima Online, and even the MUDs before it.

You dont own a damn thing, you pay a monthly fee to gain access to a virtual world, and services associated with it.

and all your talk about court this and punishment that, SE would have nothing to do with that, go talk to the court system.

"Fix the contract. Make it gigantic and actually worth reading. Give me real rights to things I pay for. I've sank several hundred bucks into this game since it started. I'd like something realistic for that. Not the bullshit agreement someone tossed up when they weren't sure the game would fly. It's not just SE that has these problems, the industry itself is riddled with them. You've got to start somewhere, though. Virtual items need to have some kind of value, even if it is just access to those items. No one addresses this right now, and it's sorely needed."

uuummm....... lol, you need to go spend money on other things besides MMORPGs.... because you dont get it ;p

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Sobering Article on Account Theft

You know, I understand the viewpoint you guys are taking that the policies this journalist is quoting are old and no longer reflect SE's business practices. That said, I hope people read this article. I further hope that it gets passed around, hyperlinked all over the place, and blackens SE's eye. Yes, I hope SE suffers because of something they've fixed. The reason I hope this is because of what they haven't fixed. We still don't really own anything. We rent characters, and that rental agreement frankly sucks.

You want both false and outdated information passed around as a form of laying blame to someone who not responsible for thier customers being fucking morons, even though SE has worked and still are working to improve the situation the best they can?

Oh, that's right, you're hoping to practice law. My bad, I was expecting ethics.

Carry on.

[Ziero]

Re: Sobering Article on Account Theft

*rant*

I am so glad you're not responsible for policy or gameplay issues with this game because you seem to have no clue what you're talking about.

[Mhurron]

Re: Sobering Article on Account Theft

Sobering Article on Account Theft

Nope, still drunk.

Um, damn...

At work, ignore that.

[Neomage]

Re: Sobering Article on Account Theft

Michelle frantically scanned these unauthorized auction sites daily, looking for a character that matched Mali's description - a high level paladin worth, according to her research, between $1500 and $2000 in these markets. That estimate didn't even including the huge cache of rare armor Michelle had accumulated and stored in Mali's inventory, collectively valued, she estimates, at well over $5000.

That is simply a large overestimate. Some of the most decked out characters in history including relics and homam gear have sold for only $2000, gear included. She claims the levels and tradeskills alone are worth that much? Geez...

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Sobering Article on Account Theft

I rolled my eyes when I got to that part, if there were really people out there dropping five grand on MMO accounts, a lot of people would just quit thier day jobs and grind characters in MMOs instead.

The whole article and its subject reeks of the "Customer is always right" mentality.

Hate to say it, but the customer is not always right.

[fallenintoshadows]

Re: Sobering Article on Account Theft

Maybe she was going by it's sentimental value because I sure as hell can't see anyone really paying that.. I can't understand people who buy accounts anyway and most likely it wasn't taken to be resold, as far as I know they get hacked and used for RMT purposes, so you'll see them running around on some other server PLing a bunch of tarus that all look the same and what not. Most people that sell accounts are the people who rightfully "own" that character and they get bored of the game and want some cash.

[Phanex]

Re: Sobering Article on Account Theft

Hate to say it, but the customer is not always right.

If only my Managers at Wal-Mart believed me when i said that back when I worked there.

Or better yet, that lady who burned herself on the McDonald's Coffee way back in the day. Hmm...is this coffee like hot? let's find out....OUCH I'm going to sue you for not telling me it was hot.

But still, it sucks this is happening...I can't read the article provied, i'm at work, i'll have to wait till i get home to read up on it.