E-Mail 'Credit card thieves attack OpenSim grids' To A Friend

14 Comments

1. 

   gee, that really stinks  =(

   i’m all for PayPal micro payments but that means real identity at a point in the transaction. in-world money is certainly the most convenient and leads to a more robust economy since it’s easier to use

   i feel badly for people needing to deal with this kind of crap because it’s such an emotional drain

   1. 

       You might do a google search for “Paypal fraud” and  “paypal sucks”,  paypal is not a bank, and according to their user agreement you sign, they can lock your money up for 180 days for any reason they want to.
      After thousands of iTunes accounts were hacked into and paypal paying the  fraudulent purchases, it took almost a week, 3 phone calls, and multiple emails to them and to iTunes to get MY money refunded-  $39.95 and $19.98, which paypal at first refused to refund, and then 3-5 more days for the funds to become available again from iTunes refunding it to paypal, plus now I either have to pay the withdrawal fees $3 total- to get it out of the ATM, or wait 3-5 more days for it to transfer back to into my checking acct.
      Oh and by the way… while the above was going on, I was UNABLE to unlink or remove my credit card backup source from my paypal account while the dispute and transaction was “in process”, I was also unable to remove or unlink my checking account as well, so while they were “investigating” the fraud, both of these payment links were kept active for several more DAYS by paypal after the first fraudulent charge came in.
       I filed a dispute with the first one, and the next day the second fraudulent charge came in!

      Paypal is neither secure, nor safe, and there are far too many people out there who posted about their bad experiences, locked accounts, lost money etc to dismiss them as a few cranks.

2. 

   Avination now uses a fraud API similar to Secondlife for all transactions

   1. 

       Very good Yoshiko!

3. 

   This is terrible but I guess inevitable as criminals look for easy ways to cash in on stolen credit cards. On a brighter note this may also indicate that the open Metaverse is growing in trade and economic activity which is a good sign. Personally, I am considering OMC pocket money if I ever open up my grid service in any commercial sense. For small grids like mine only concerned with running a role play game I think it safer to leave the banking to professionals.

   Gaga

4. 

   One thing we have done at Virtual Highway is limit all our buying and selling of in world currency  transactions though Pay Pal.  If someone wants to use a credit card they have to go though the pay pal website.
    Also all our out going transactions are done manually .

   1. 

       InWorldz, is also set as strictly through PayPal. Be aware, no matter how you set your fraud filters, it won’t end fraud. The best you can do is limit the amount by which it’s done, and negate the biggest risk factors. This has to be done via both sides, your own website and PayPal.

5. 

   Thanks for the great article Maria. It is a shame that crooks are doing this. Having been a part of the MMORPG community for years and having seen how crooks operate in that venue, I suppose it was only a matter of time until virtual worlds became a target as well.
   I hope the situation in IWz is sorted soon but in the meantime, we are looking at repairing our website and linking vendors directly to the items we have for sale on our site thus providing direct delivery. We feel that may be the least disruptive and smoothest way for us to do the little bit of business that we do there. At the moment, we are having delivery issues. This issue should be repaired soon so that we may again service our IWz customers as well as serving other grids with extended and professional licensing.

   1. 

      I have been working all day with the affected vendors and the APIs they need will be available shortly. I just want to let you know in case it affects your plans.

6. 

   The fraud detection API implementation is complete and testing looks good. It will be up tomorrow for further testing by merchants 

   1. 

      Good luck Tranquillity,

      I hope this will significantly reduce the fraud rate on your grid. It’s very unfortunate that we all have to deal with people who will gladly hurt others just to make a quick buck.

      1. 

         Thanks Ilan.

         I agree wholeheartedly. I think if people worked at making money legally as hard as they do trying to steal it, they’d find they would have a lot more opportunity.

         Tests look great. We’re taking a lot of data into account to come up with a risk factor. It looks to be correctly identifying account risks on known bad and known good avatars.

7. 

   “One grid hit recently (by credit card cashout fraud) is InWorldz”

   I knew this would eventually happen there.

8. 

   This is a good example of how international commerce is changing.  As long as there is a loophole to exploit, the crooks are gonna find it.  Pennies are just as good as dollars as long as they add up for them.