“A virtual thieving spree could have real life consequences for culprits in Finland, where police are investigating the theft of virtual furniture on a social networking site popular with teenagers.
‘Significant amounts of virtual property’ were stolen from around 400 users of the Habbo Hotel virtual hotel, where visitors can create a character for themselves to hang out with friends, take care of virtual pets and furnish their own rooms for a fee, Finnish police said Tuesday.
The cyber thieves used hoax web pages to steal user names and passwords, which they then used to sign in to Habbo profiles and shift property away from its rightful owners, the police said in a statement.
As part of the investigation, the police have searched homes in five Finnish cities, confiscated computers and interrogated several people, they said, adding that while the value of damages could not yet be defined, for some users the cost could be ‘significant’.”
Read more at Yahoo News (thanks, GadgetFreakk)
Hehe… People are still trolling habbo hotel.
The wording may strike you as strange “stealing virtual property” though this is still hacking in it’s most basic form which of course is illigal so in not surprised they are investigating.
Why is stealing a crime in a world where you have endless resources?
@Yener
It is a crime because you still have to pay real and limited resources to have these virtual and endless resources.
@Yener Because the property owners paid for their “furniture”.
wow, i had no idea the sims could call the coppers!
Yener: Because of the artificial scarcity imposed by the programmers, who would like to make some money for all the work they do. If you only get a chair by paying a few pounds, then that’s a limited resource and something that represents value. Stealing that is equivalent to stealing said amount of money.
You could say that the moderators of the game could just give the victim another pixel chair, but that would lead to massive inflation of the in-game economics, as the thiefs would be reselling the chair as well (effectively, there’s now two chairs for the price of one, and if both are resold, the chair will be devalued).
These things may just be pixels, but they represent a value in real life money, so their theft is a real life crime.
They should design a ‘grand theft’ style add-on where anyone can go bounty hunting for the perps, man. Sniper shots from distant rooftops. Kick in doors and hunt down those crazy sofas.
I remember the exact moment when I knew on a basic, practical level, that we’re living in the Philip K. Dick world. Imagine the fun he would’ve had with this news story!
Yener – hear hear, you gosh-darn anarchist! ;D The same question has been asked, many times, about the “real” world – and has been just as misunderstood.
So you’ve clicked a phishing link and had your virtual goodies stolen. Shut the computer off and go for a run at the gym, or call the cops?
What a sad, sad state of affairs.
Trey, Habbo Hotel is a game aimed at children as far as I know, so I assume it’s the parents that paid for the virtual furniture that took objection to their child being scammed.