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.

I had about £300 taken out of my account for a new mobile phone - I hadn't bought it, can't remember the details but I didn't need to provide exhaustive proof - they investigated it and reimbursed me.

Which bank are you with? Mine was HSBC.

People are always giving their card details out - that's how internet and phone shopping is done.

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Thanks everyone.

Piffle pur computer is upstairs in the study and only dp and I use it so there is no chance of it being anyone else.

I am begining to think it must be an inside job, I have already phoned paypal on a few occsins and have informed them that I have called the police. They are chasing the matter as they have started holding on to payments and contacted the sellers involved to tell them about their fraudulent custom.

I have been told that the investigation will take 7-10 days, it id fortunante that I have dp and my Mum to replace the money and that I get paid after the weekend. If I was on my own and it was no where near payday and these gits had emptied my bank account how would I cope until it had been investigated and refunded?

I have been thinking about this.

I presume the seller would have to have the name of the character that they send the gold to.

When I started playing you have to provided all your details and a credit card so that they can take the monthly online fee out. I am assuming that someone has given their real details to play.

The company that runs the game MUST know whose account a character belongs to. Under normal privacy policy I can undertand them not giving the information out. They may have to for illegal/fradulant activities. They could also confirm if the character had received gold from another character as well.

It must also be in the companys interests that this is sorted out it is not going to look good for them that their players are doing this sort of thing. I wonder if they can become involved.

I hope you get this sorted soon.

Kathlean, depends if the credit card details they gave to the gaming company were their credit card details or if these too were stolen.

twinsetandpearls really sorry to hear about this. It is very worrying as I often use paypal and I think you have to give in a credit card to become verified as well as your bank account.

Do you have wireless broadband or a telephone/cable line internet access. Just asking as I have heard people can hack into wireless connections?

Yeah, I did say assuming they had given their real details.

I suppose someone may not notice 1 or 2 fees coming out of their cards so someone could set up a character to receive and pass on the gold again.

These people are real scum.

OMG this is so bizarre!

Really feel for you TS&P - hope it gets sorted quickly.

Cliff, surely it doesn't matter if Paypal have firewalls galore if someone's managed to obtain the password details from twinset's PC with a virus/trojan/whatever? It doesn't need to be an inside job at all. In fact, if I were doing an inside job, I assume I would have acess to lots of different accounts so would be able to take £10 from 100 accounts and have it far less noticable.

Very true Soupy. They'd have to be bloody clever to get in though! Esp as she's said that she hardly uses her account, there'd be no recent data on her pc containing this info so they'd have to dig deep. But yeah, it is possible. Either way Paypal do have to take responsibility as she should have been getting emails, as stated in their policy, that this transaction had taken place.

I hope it gets sorted out quickly for you..the crime rate with cards and the internet has increased enormously since chip and pin..

I have a website and never heard anything fraud related until yesterday when a ds rang me concerning transactions but fortunately none had been made relating to the case he was investigating.

Paypal are, ultimately, responsible for the fraud yes. I think twinset did get emails... ah yes "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"

Either someone's swiped her account details or it's someone she knows who's worked them out. Dunno. Don't think it sounds clever enough for an inside job.

Sorry Soupy, missed that bit about the emails!

I've rather hurriedly checked the email account I only use for Paypal & Ebay

I think it's ordinary fraud. have you checked your computer for trojans lately? they could have got the details that way.

keep chasing paypal - it could well be the seller of the gold.

trojans are what I meant when I asked about spyware before although again paypal claim to be safe.

Still waiting for the police...

Don't Trojans decipher key strokes (or am i wrong) so pick up your details

I was thank ful today for the anti virus software blocking an email with a threat in it..called itself an email from Tiscali relating to the suspension of my Tiscali email account

I thought that is what tojans were, so they woud be able to pick up my details. But would paypal not have some kind of protection against this?

I don't think they can protect against picking up info from your computer but you should still be protected from fraudulent use of your details (though i did see something at some time about introducing the idea that customers would be expected to take reasonable precautions ie have a personal firewall and updated anti virus software)

I am just running my anti virus now, it normally does pick things up but I suppose there is always a chance that you could be caught out before your anti virus can detect it.

Try pandasoft too It picks up stuff thay my Norton AV misses.

I have panda software on a Mumsnet recomendation a few months ago. It has picked up a few bits of spware but nothing serious.

OMG this is mad. Did you not get any emails saying Thank you for your payment or, here is your reciept for payment to XYZ?