Fallen victim of a bizzarre payal goldfarming fraud

[twinsetandpearls]

Almost £1000 of money has beenn spent from my bank account using paypal, the bank have basically told me that they are not responsible and paypal have told me they need to investigate. While this drags on I am £1000 down just before Christmas.

I have called the police who are coming around this afternoon.

I have done some of my own research and the money seems to have been spent on gold from a game called world of warcraft. This gold is then sold on for real currency - called gold farming apparantly. This has left me completely baffled and broke - does anyone know anything about it.

I have not replied to any emails or entered my details in anywhere about my paypal account I am not sure how they have hacked into my account.

you buy the money online - in return you get gold that you can 'spend' in a virtual world. This is so sought after that people pay real money for it.

sorry to hear this what a nightmare!!

Message withdrawn

It is odd, I am trying to find out more about it so I can tell the police but the more I read the more confused I become.

Can i ask who alerted you to this? Was it your bank or were you checking your bank balance?

I received a "phishing" email from Paypal a few weeks ago telling me that I ahd spent USD$300 on a watch which I hadn't.

I clicked on the Dispute Transaction button which purportedly brought me onto a Paypal website, but I double-checked the URL and realised it wasn't the real Paypal website but it looked exactly like it and was asking me to enter my details, including card / bank details.

well I know that lots of people buy virtual stuff with real money to use in online gaming

eg here

I noticed when I went to my bank account and there was no money in there! I phoned the bank and they lsted loads of paypal transactions that i knew nothing about.

I have not been using my computer, I checked my email and there had been about 35 transactions from my paypal account which I had not authorised over 2 days.

As I said I have not replied to any emails or entered my details in anywhere.

Do they really need to know the details of goldfarming?

Basically in the online game you earn gold for doing things. This can be traded to other online players for items to use in the game.

Some people advertised their gold on ebay. You pay say £10 for 10 gold for example. You pay them the real money in real life and they will transfer the game gold to your character for you to use.

I hope this helps.

As an aside a Chinese (I think) man stabbed his mate in real life after lending him an item in a game and the other guy selling it for real money and giving to another character. I think it was about £500! Another guy American (I think) has bought a make believe island on one of these games and is selling land on it for real money. Scary.

I play these games but it is JUST A GAME!

What on earth ar these games??
There are other things on the web other than mumsnet and Boden???

If you can prove that these transactions did not come from your pc, then you should be able to claim it back. I'm surprised the bank can't do more! Paypal are also at fault, that system is supposed to be VERY secure. They could trace who did it by tracking down the ISP of the computer. Get the Police to put some pressure on Paypal, after all they are at fault if someone has fraudulently taken money from your account;

world of warcraft, everquest to name a couple.

I am playing now. basically you chose your character race ie barbarian, dwarf, elf etc chose how they look then what they are wizards, knights, healers etc.

Then you run around doing quests. Killin gthings, finding things deilvering messages that sort of thing. Some give you money (gold) some give you experience which helps your character become stonger/more powerful and some give you weapons etc.

You can play alone or group with other people online and play together. Some people get together and set up guilds which is a bit liek a club (-:

Hope that helps (-:

I have called in the police to do exactly that CliffRichardSUIH and they have got there act together since I have informed them that i am calling the police.

At first the bank said that they would repay the money but when they found out that i had used paypal they said that once you give your card details to someone they are no longer liable. I asked the bank when they told me this and they said when I opened my account - which happened 25 years ago before the internet but apparantly this does not make a difference.

I don't care who gives me my money back as long as someone does. I jsut don't understand how this has happened when I have not given my details to anyone, I ave not replied to any emails and paypal is supposed to be safe.

Which is why Paypal are to blame. Could even be one of their employees! In any case, they're gonna need to come up with some results for the Police pretty pronto! Tell them you are going to your local paper too, they hate bad publicity!

They probably don't need to know the details, I just thought the more information I can give the quicker I may get my money back. It is our Christmas money that we had saved - I could cry

I was also curious about the fu**ers that ahve stolen my money.

I might do that, even worse I could go to the Daily Mail - everyone is scared of the Daily Mail!

I didn't even think it could be an employee.

That sounds like a shocking breach - hope Paypal comes up with some answers for you.

Once you give your card details, you're to blame for fraud?! No way!

I'm thinking inside job as otherwise it's virtually impossible to get your account details.

So would I be right in thinking that the people who have stolen my money have either bought this gold for themselves - so my dd could be having a crap Christmas because someone wants to do well in a computer game!! or to sell on to other people on sites like ebay?

Interestingly one of the transactions was on ebay which I have reported to ebay and when I tried to trace the seller I found feedback account just full of question marks.

All very odd - I feel as if I am enetering a seedy underworld.

So can people not access my paypal account using spyware or the like?

Am going to take dd to school and then the police are coming round. Thanks for the advice.

It is very scary.

DP and I play in the evenings after DS is in bed. We sit and chat to people from all over Europe. We never give out any personal information or even our real names though.

It has never crossed my mind that I could be chatting to some evil b"£tard who would go and steal thousands of £'s from someone else.

Some people do get very addicted to these games and treat them more real than they should. I probably play too much (should be doing the housework now) but turn off when I pick DS up from school and try not to turn on until he has gone to bed. If you play in a group it is very easy to get sucked into I have to play or I am letting everyone else down.

Just a question, are you absolutely postitive that its not a dp friend of dp's or a brother etc
I know probably not, but worth checking for sure?
Otherwise I am sure that in time it will be resolved desp sad that it wil take that time for you though TSAP

Yes you can have spyware, but Paypal has firewalls and are secured up to the hilt to protect their account holders, they have to be or they'd be out of business!

You won't have a crap Christmas! Our account was once fleeced of £150 quid, a paltry amount compared to yours I know, dh gave our bank details to the local garage when he paid by card. They took a copy of the details and then stole the money from our account. The bank paid up. Everytime you use your card to pay for something, you are giving that company your card details. I would go back to the bank and tell them that their excuse is not good enough!

Telephone Paypal too and tell them that you want the money back before Christmas or you'll call the National Press to report their shoddy customer service and total lack of security!

This is what it says on the PayPal site, might be worth quoting all this back to them!

" Extensive protection against fraudulent transactions from your account

With PayPal, you have extensive protection against fraudulent transactions from your account.
To help you keep track of your account activity, PayPal sends an email confirmation of every account transaction.

In the unlikely event of receiving confirmation of a transaction you don?t recognise, our dedicated customer support team is there to help you. With PayPal, you typically won't be held liable for payments that you did not approve.

Data Security and Encryption

The security of your information, transactions, and money is the core of our business and our top priority at PayPal.

PayPal automatically encrypts your confidential information in transit from your computer to ours using the Secure Sockets Layer protocol (SSL) with an encryption key length of 128-bits (the highest level commercially available). Before you even register or log in to our site, our server checks that you're using an approved browser - one that uses SSL 3.0 or higher.

Once your information reaches us, it resides on a server that is heavily guarded both physically and electronically. Our servers sit behind an electronic firewall and are not directly connected to the Internet, so your private information is available only to authorised computers.

Which is why I think it might be an inside job. Get on the phone to them now! Don't worry, you'll get your money back.