Ok, this is my first blog entry, and I know your itching to learn more about who I am, and what I intend to do here, but that is going to have to wait for another time. Suffice it to summarize I am over 40yrs old, have worked in the gaming industry for both a MMO company and a console company in the recent past. I play WoW right now. Thats all you get for the moment, I promise to expand on that later.Right now
Im just pissed off, truly... Once a day I get a new attempt to steal my WoW accounts in my email box. Sometimes I get two of them. At first it was amusing, with the broken english, poor grammar and horrid sentence structure. Now a few friends of mine have had their accounts hijacked to these gold sellers. So Im pissed now. I started to take a good look at these messages, stripping out the routing off the headers, backtracking to the real origin. Guess what...
It really is Chinese and Korean gold farmers. I always figured it was just American Bullshit spouting off, blaming the Chinese farmer, as we to have a tendancy to look down on non-American cultures and place a stereotype blame across the board for no good reason. Now I discover there actually is something to it.
Here is my latest phishing in my inbox:
When Cataclysm launches,what do you plan on doing first
Greetings, This is Blizzard Entertainment apology, we acknowledge a mistake, for you to lose the World of Warcraft account in order to recover our losses, we will give you 10000 gold coins free of charge and rare mounts a (celestial steed), I hope you can restart the game. Login website authentication, 48 hours you will receive compensation {removed Bogus phishing address from here] Description: test account and permanently disabled can not compensation This is Blizzard Entertainment's apology, we acknowledge a mistake, for you to lose the World of Warcraft account in order to recover our losses, we will give you 10000 gold coins free of charge and rare mounts a (celestial steed), I hope you can restart the game. Login website authentication, 48 hours you will receive compensation Description: test account and permanently disabled can not compensation
All I can say is that none of this even makes sense! Its horribly written, unprofessional, and makes me cringe when I read it. So then I strip the header and find the origionating address, which I pour into my WHOIS and find this:
The following results may also be obtained via:
# http://whois.arin.net/rest/nets;q=61.164.88.222?showDetails=true&showARIN=false
#
NetRange: 61.0.0.0 - 61.255.255.255
CIDR: 61.0.0.0/8
OriginAS:
NetName: APNIC3
NetHandle: NET-61-0-0-0-1
Parent:
NetType: Allocated to APNIC
NameServer: TINNIE.ARIN.NET
NameServer: SEC1.AUTHDNS.RIPE.NET
NameServer: NS4.APNIC.NET
NameServer: NS3.APNIC.NET
NameServer: NS1.APNIC.NET
NameServer: NS2.LACNIC.NET
Comment: This IP address range is not registered in the ARIN database.
Comment: For details, refer to the APNIC Whois Database via
Comment: WHOIS.APNIC.NET or http://wq.apnic.net/apnic-bin/whois.pl
Comment: ** IMPORTANT NOTE: APNIC is the Regional Internet Registry
Comment: for the Asia Pacific region. APNIC does not operate networks
Comment: using this IP address range and is not able to investigate
Comment: spam or abuse reports relating to these addresses. For more
Comment: help, refer to http://www.apnic.net/apnic-info/whois_search2/abuse-and-spamming
RegDate: 1997-04-25
Updated: 2010-07-30
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-61-0-0-0-1
OrgName: Asia Pacific Network Information Centre
OrgId: APNIC
Address: PO Box 2131
City: Milton
StateProv: QLD
PostalCode: 4064
Country: AU
RegDate:
Updated: 2004-03-01
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/APNIC
ReferralServer: whois://whois.apnic.net
This leads me to a server in Australia, and further investigation shows the actual phishing website, while hosted in Australia, is bought and paid for by a company in China, and accessed from as such remotely. The hosting site seems to be popular as it is easy, no human intervention setup for any domain you want pretty darn instantly.
So now my rant: FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO THINK GOLD BUYING IS HARMLESS, I sincerely hope you get hacked and ripped off. These gold sellers will stop at nothing to obtain virtual gold and the only reason they exist is because people actually BUY the stuff. In games where there is no gold seller activity, you will also notice there are hardly any paying players, and those that are there dont buy gold.
Do the frikkin math folks, if you cheat at a MMO by buying gold, you have no right to ever complain about the state of the game from then on. Your only contributing to theft.
yup pretty interesting blog post. last paragraph is true. if there is no demand there will be no supply, because it will not be profitable. If you have no real time to dedicate to a MMO during your free time, dont play it. IF you want to pay for items use a game that has its own cashshop as it goes right back to the player in the form of content, bug fixes, and improvements.
Sun Nov 07 2010 10:33PM ReportI enjoyed the irony of a spambot running for a scam-company likely in China posting comments on a blog bashing Chinese scam artists.
Mon Nov 08 2010 6:44AM ReportWow, thats frikkin hilarious, a spambot responding to my blog about chinese gold sellers. Just wow...
Mon Nov 08 2010 3:47PM ReportCould not agree more with poster. Same goes with animal fur and alike. No demand, no supply. Criminals are both.
Tue Nov 09 2010 4:06AM Reportyes i agree with OP .
Tue Nov 09 2010 7:28AM Reportcross posting here but good news for gamers
http://blog.games.yahoo.com/blog/141-game-over-for-online-cheaters
Tue Nov 09 2010 7:40AM ReportHaha Op, i play wow for like 4 years and i knew perfectly, gold spammers send you messages ONLY if you buy something from them or enter email on their sites. So your flameheart words about sellers is funny,
Personnaly i dont mind about them. Like in RL there will be always shortcuts.
Tue Nov 09 2010 7:42AM ReportDarker84 - Unfortunately thats not true, I have never bought or logged into a gold seller website. My testing of their phishing sites is done on a throwaway laptop that gets wiped after each foray into their world, and it is most certainly NOT on my network; its isolated.
I have friends at work that do not and have never play WoW, yet as gamers, they get the emails in their inbox as well, so they just play the field i guess....
Tue Nov 09 2010 3:15PM ReportYour hired. I'm forwarding all my MMO spam.
Tue Nov 09 2010 6:05PM ReportA BIG APPLAUSE TO THE OP. Finally someone who puts the gold selling problem right square where it belongs. On those who BUY the Gold. Yep it is the Gold Buyers cash that drives these business. Just like if no one bought illegal drugs there would be no Illegal Drug dealers .... same with virtual gold.
If you cheating gold buying asshats would quit buying it they would just dry up and go away.
and AH prices would drop too lol
Tue Nov 09 2010 6:27PM ReportDude, you need to do more research. Gold farmers for the most part are own by americans and europeans and they out source the work to asian companies and have managers that run the offices there. The jobs pay very bad, but for the places they are in, its still a good job. You have to understand the culture over there and the poverty over there.They are sweat shops, yes, and they can cripple certain games, but its better to have them in these shops than out on the street committing crimes and selling themselves.
I could go on and on about it, but it wont do any good. People are always quick to just on board and agree with something they have very little information on.
Rather than discussing it with your guild mates and agreeing with each other that you're pissed about gold farmers, do some research before you rant about them and give out what you call facts.
Tue Nov 09 2010 6:32PM ReportJinxxed0 - You make interesting claims, unfortunately you offer noting to back them up, so either cough up the proof, your your just spouting more information based on your opinion.
I tracked the site to china, the phishing email to australia and a compromised computer in the US with a worm on it. Thats it, I can prove those things, but not any link back to outsourcing.
Wed Nov 10 2010 6:27PM ReportWe all know this, stop touting it like it was something new.
Thu Nov 11 2010 7:15AM ReportI quit wow after i got hacked twice and blizzard not doing a thing about the matter. As its there game they should be doing the thing that you have done, tracking where it's coming from and putting an end to it. It's been getting worse and worse over the years and really needs to be delt with.
Thu Nov 11 2010 9:14AM ReportTheKandy - Let me respond to you in a word: NO
read below your post to see why. Have faith, I am going to post more blogs, more insight, and pose some decent questions and strike a few new ideas.
Join in or butt out....
Thu Nov 11 2010 2:28PM ReportThank you Chronis. I look forward to your next blog entry.
Thu Nov 11 2010 5:50PM ReportIt's like people buying stolen stuff in real life, they are supporting thieves, plain and simple.
Sat Nov 13 2010 7:03PM ReportMMORPG.com writes:
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