Identity theft hits home.

[self biased]

my wife was distraught the other day when she discovered that she'd hit the overdraft on the account. yesterday, there were three more waiting for her. upon opening them up we discovered that three charges to blizzard entertainment were made for world of warcraft subscriptions.

the funny thing is: neither of us play World of Warcraft. we're going to the bank today to dispute the charges. my best guess is that my computer is riddled with viruses, spyware, and other garbage.

can anyone direct me to a reliable and free adware remover and virus scanner?

[Jon Miller]

burn the stuff you awnt to keep to disk

format

have lots of protection when you read those disks

JM

[Tuberski]

AVG

Spybot Search and Destroy.

ACK!

[SlowwHand]

In Safe Mode.

[DanS]

I had a World of Warcraft false charge to my account a few months ago too. I disputed the charge online and they removed it.

[LordShiva]

It was Dis

[self biased]

there was a grand total of seven WOW charges, two Itunes charges, and a charge to NCsoft, we've found. the bank was actually quite helpful and said that this sort of thing is frequent and can still hit users that are diligent about their security, instead of lackluster such as myself.

[Lord Avalon]

There's also Ad-Aware.

[Elok]

What kind of loser steals someone else's identity and uses it to buy a lot of intangible electronic crap? You'd think he'd buy himself a decent meal, some suits, jewelry, a stereo, etc. Not a bunch of WoW accounts that'll be shut down once his theft is discovered. Were criminals always this stupid?

[LordShiva]

Online criminals these days usually steal many credit card numbers and try to keep the charges on each of them small so that they go unnoticed.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Elok
What kind of loser steals someone else's identity and uses it to buy a lot of intangible electronic crap? You'd think he'd buy himself a decent meal, some suits, jewelry, a stereo, etc. Not a bunch of WoW accounts that'll be shut down once his theft is discovered. Were criminals always this stupid?

I think it's probably steal then sell.

[self biased]

my wife's account is little more than her personal pocket money. there usually is never more than an hundred dollars in it. and when it's close to payday for us (this friday or er... tomorrow) that'll be distinctly less. thank god they didn't hit the main account, it would have taken us far longer to discover the theft. ironically enough i'd purchased a guitar earlier in the day via Ebay and paypal.

all in all, it could be a shyte side worse than it is. the only disappointment i've got is that whomever did this will likely not face any charges: most likely it's some sh!thead in korea or china who is not under the jurisdiction of american laws. god forbid this person is within a two hour drive of my friends and our antique lead plumbing collection.

[Kassiopeia]

Originally posted by Elok
What kind of loser steals someone else's identity and uses it to buy a lot of intangible electronic crap? You'd think he'd buy himself a decent meal, some suits, jewelry, a stereo, etc. Not a bunch of WoW accounts that'll be shut down once his theft is discovered. Were criminals always this stupid?

My guess would be gold sellers. Electronic credit card fraud is more often than not pretty organized, so I don't think it's some loser in a dark room who just had to get their fix.

[self biased]

the gentleman at blizzard was exceptionally reluctant to talk about gold farming or "secondary economy" as he termed it. this reluctance flagged red for me and pretty much told me how it was.

[Jon Miller]

Most companies don't even try to do something against it. Some even start selling gold (not explicitly, but in practicality) themselves in an effort to at least control it.

JM