I'm afraid that online game crime does happen and is much more common than you would imagine. I recently read a story about a young girl who played a very popular online game, she spoke a lot with friend who slowly became rather infatuated.
One day the girl said to her friend " give me your password to prove how much you love me." The young boy duly agreed and was rather horrified to find out later that the object of his affections and transferred all his online money, gold and equipment to her own character.
Would you class this as theft?
The girl certainly didn't think so, citing the fact it was only a game. However the sale of online possessions is a huge 'real world' business which grosses millions of dollars every year. There was no real world financial gain in this case however there easily could have been as the online proceeds of this cruel act could easily have been sold.
Still hopefully our young victim has learn a valuable life lesson without any real damage. He won't be the last to fall for this sort of ploy on or offline I'm sure.
It is a real danger though, each year thousands of viruses and trojans are written specifically to steal the passwords of online gamers everywhere. If you have ever logged in to any of the online games then you've probably come across people offering to sell gold or possessions at very low prices. It is big business and your accounts are at risk be careful with them.
We might laugh at the poor victim of an alleged cyber mugging - but the player in these games invest huge parts of their lives in their online personnas. In fact many of them would handle being robbed in real life better than having their online goods stolen.
Be careful with your accounts and never, ever give away your passwords to anyone online, even if you love them !
