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Fallen victim of a bizzarre payal goldfarming fraud

82 replies

twinsetandpearls · 25/11/2005 11:44

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.

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Janh · 25/11/2005 18:32

twinset, I lost 2 (luckily very small) amounts of money via Paypal like this; it was also on a gaming website but football, not gold.

They froze my Paypal account until I had changed password etc, then emailed a claim form which I completed and posted back, and the money was reimbursed fairly soon afterwards. The original transactions were in euros and I lost a couple of quid on the exchange rate but it all went quite smoothly. It was a credit card though, not a current account - I didn't have one registered then - I do now, maybe I should cancel it if that's possible?

twinsetandpearls · 25/11/2005 19:10

Janh I would imagine that you could withdraw your account.

When I spoke to the ban they advised you to use credit cards for paypal as you ahve more protection.

I don't have a credit card though so it isn't an option open to me.

charlie... I did get emails over two days but they came over two days when I hadn't accessed my computer so i didn't realise until it was two late. The transactions (32 in total) were carried out straight after each other.

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expatinscotland · 25/11/2005 19:20

I had an order confirmation alert email from my amazon.co.uk account. It immediately asked me to enter my details. I deleted it.

Beware, folks! This is also happening on Amazon!

Miaou · 25/11/2005 19:25

Just telling dh about this - do you have a firewall in place? If it is XP's own firewall, this only provides protection against incoming traffic, not outgoing.

CliffRichardSucksEggsinHell · 25/11/2005 19:27

I just closed my PayPal account!

expatinscotland · 25/11/2005 19:29

Yep, have Firewall, spyware, the lot. Use McAfee's Net Security. I've also done it from work and they have rippin' security. But I have a feeling these hackers are going after the big guns themselves to tap into loads of accounts.

expatinscotland · 25/11/2005 19:29

Have nothing but credit cards now on both my amazon and PayPal accounts - NOT current account cards.

twinsetandpearls · 25/11/2005 20:57

Yes we have a panda package with firewall, spyware protection and anti virus which is updated daily.

Have spoken to the police and paypal and have an appointment on wednesday with someone who specialises in internet fraud.

Paypal apparantly have all my money which will be returned to me once the investigation is complete. They claim they are confident that they will catch the culprits and will prosecute them.

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Janh · 25/11/2005 21:44

Just removed my current account details from my Paypal.

charlietherednosedpussy · 25/11/2005 21:49

I have a current account attached that I withdraw funds too. Its my credit card that Paypal sucks money frojm If I dont have enough in my PP account....where else could I put the funds if not into my current account?

Janh · 25/11/2005 21:51

Credit card safer and more secure I think, charlie - a) the money doesn't vanish instantly and b) the credit card company is more interested in going after the little shits than your bank (I think)

piffle · 25/11/2005 22:17

putting money into your current account is ok and safe, you have to set up permission to withdraw from your current account to use to pay for things, although I guess hackers could do anything right.
I'm closing my current account payment option as of now though.

hub2dee · 25/11/2005 23:52

twinset - if password is (was) in any way obviously identifiable (kids name, your / their date of birth maybe / maiden name / home town / mother's name / dh's name etc. they perhaps simply 'guessed' it from knowing some small bit of information about you, perhaps even gleaned from something like that 192.com site that has been linked to a few times IYSWIM...

e-mail addresses even posted on MN, or URLS pointing to photo albums that have your RL name etc. etc. can, very often help a hacker guess / derive usernames, and /or passwords. People (and I'm not saying you) often are fairly lax wrt this sort of security.

Also, think of how many websites we all register at (including of course MN, but possibly dozens or even hundreds of others)... where our preferred user name is often the same, or it's an obvious first initial / surname type of thing, and our password is often the same too, across dozens of sites, so an employee / site owner of some small / obscure site might then use your data to attack your id at a larger site IYSWIM...

Trojans can log keystrokes, dump your output from a few minutes / hours / days to another server on the net etc. if it has compromised your firewall. Parsers can then search for something like 'www.amazon.com' and then extract the next 50 keystrokes, which might be you entering your username and password... and bob's your uncle. This is obviously automated and the program to do this could spread like a virus / worm.

There are also keystroke loggers which can go inline between the end of your keyboard cable and your PC, which just look like little grey plastic thingies (like ordinary kosher PS/2 to AT adaptors) and perhaps a PC in a public place (like work) has been tampered with ? It is not unknown for this to be used by suspicious spouses etc.

I don't know what might have happened in your instance, and of course it might be none of the things I've outlined, but I would (as always) mention that IMHO an Apple Mac is far more resistant to virii and malware / Trojans than a PC. This would offer you nothing if the hack was derived by social engineering or a keystroke logging dongle, but spyware / Trojans on the Mac platform are, currently, essentially non-existant. Food for thought in my book.

If anyone feels any of that was particularly useful I'll bung it into a 'computer security' thread. It really isn't nice when it happens to you.

zippimistletoes · 26/11/2005 08:15

On the security thing Friends reunited is another place to find info about someone

LadyTophamHatt · 26/11/2005 09:22

Bliemy.....this has freaked my right out!

I hope it gets sorted out TSaP.

I've just removed my debit cards details from my paypal account too. Scary!!

NannyL · 26/11/2005 10:17

Have you always had up to date file walls? cause without it some computer hackers can read EVERY key that you press

(NOT antivirus) cause its NOT a vorus, its caleed something else...

did u see them do it on watchdog a few weeks ago? took this guy about 10 seconds!

twinsetandpearls · 26/11/2005 20:18

WE have always had firewalls as part of our anti virus software which is updated as we switch the computer on. But clearly something went wrong.

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SueW · 26/11/2005 21:05

We had something hit our computer last year which was so new, symantec hadn't got it listed. It was clunky though and slowed the compute down so much that it was easy to spot on task manager. It arrived early on Sat morning, I checked immediately at symantec, nothing mentioned under the file name, turned the PC off went out for the day and by the time I got home, symantec had got a fix!

Hope you get this sorted out soon.

Anniek · 26/11/2005 21:55

I work in IT and trust me it is scary how easy it is to hack into someone's pc, and if you do buy on E bay they could have been someone you had a "legit" transaction with, so they would have your user name, and then you would supply them with your address and real name willingly, and they could visit your house go through your bins, and if you don't shred they could collect a lot of information about you.

As one of my guys who is in charge of our corporate firewalls said to me once "to be honest boss, if they want in badly enough they will get in..."

twinsetandpearls · 26/11/2005 22:30

My dp works with computers AnnieK and he says the same, if they have targetted you and want to get in they will.

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LadyTophamHatt · 28/11/2005 19:32

Have you got you money back yet TSaP?

twinsetandpearls · 29/11/2005 16:59

No money back yet, ahve an appointment with at the police station tomorow.

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twinsetandpearls · 29/11/2005 18:11

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

LadyTophamHatt · 30/11/2005 12:45

is that an additional £700 pound? Like a new claim to your bank account or part of the older one?

I hope it's part of the older original claim.

I hope it gets sorted soon.

twinsetandpearls · 30/11/2005 21:17

No the £700 was part of the original claim, when i contacted the bank last week that £700 was going through the clearing process which they ahve reversed.

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