Tiberious said:
I do not normally contribute to forums preferring to read and learn rather than show my limited knowledge on whatever subject is under discussion, however since I now find myself as the interim marshal of Emperors and having a vested interest in the outcome of this I feel it is necessary to add something that I haven't seen so far
I don't claim to know anything about hacking, cracking coding or much about software at all for that matter, nor do I know who is responsible for this mess.
However virtual worlds aside I have worked in over 30 countries in my career so have a basic understanding of international law as it applies to this incident and that is regardless whose system was penetrated and by what method it was undeniably only one thing - Identity theft.
That is a crime, Quote.
“Identity theft”: Taking identification or personal information in a manner analogous to theft, including theft of tangible documents and intangible information and deceptively persuading individuals to surrender documents or information voluntarily.
Identity-related crime with economic or financial elements includes cases where ID abuses are used in support of other crimes for the purpose of a financial or other material benefit (vast majority) → application of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime
Under this definition a crime has been committed and individuals have lost assets under the care of the service and security that Plarium provide through no fault of the individual and these assets could be replaced at zero cost to Plarium if they so choose.
The follow on to this is that should Plarium choose not to replace these assets and subsequently accept funds from the players to replace them then they are in effect profiting from a criminal act and by definition of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 Australia and Israel are committing a crime themselves.
This may sound a little over the top to some but given that the cost of replacing the units lost is in excess of $80,000 US it starts to get real very quick.
These are just my thoughts on the matter.
T.
I could build a billion offense on an account for less than $10,000. I'm not sure how you managed to spend $80,000 on it, but that doesn't make it worth that much.
But the price is irrelevant.
If the player willingly gave their login details to someone else (however that person managed to convince them to share their details doesn't matter), they violated plarium's terms of service. Therefore the player would be at fault and plarium would be under no obligation to replace the lost goods.
Also, unless the other person signed a contract specifying what they were supposed to do with the account when they were provided the login details for it, the other person could claim they believed it was being given to them as a gift and therefore theft would not be provable.
(This of course assumes that it was someone who was at some point given access to the account by the player. If the login details were stolen through the use of malware then it is obviously a crime, but unless there is a police investigation and they find malware on the player's computer this will be very difficult to prove.)