ID Theft Victims Sue NCSoft in South Korea 21
greyfeld writes "South Korean lawyers have filed a class action lawsuit against NCSoft related to the identity theft of 230,000 people whose information was then used to register accounts on Lineage and Lineage2. From the Vnunet article: 'Most of the identify thefts took place over the past six months as underground gaming syndicates stole victims' official Korean ID numbers in hacking attacks and used them to register hundreds of thousands of Lineage accounts...the new accounts were then 'farmed' by low paid workers in Chinese gaming sweatshops to generate 'gold' and other game-world items that could be sold for real world cash.'"
Going around your elbow... (Score:1)
Re:Going around your elbow... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Going around your elbow... (Score:2)
Amazing (Score:1)
Happened with the WoW Beta too (Score:1)
A guy in my current guild was caught doing that when he had to page a GM to get unstuck somewhere. It aint easy communicating in Korean in realtime
Re:Happened with the WoW Beta too (Score:2)
Oddly attractive deal... (Score:3, Funny)
Wow! The low-paid workers in my country are stuck flipping hamburgers or stocking walmart shelves. In South Korea, they get to play MMOs all day!
Re:Oddly attractive deal... (Score:1)
Er
The low paid workers in CHINA are stuck working 12 hours shifts farming gold in lineage in dubious rooms WITHOUT any heating.
Re:Oddly attractive deal... (Score:2)
Re:Oddly attractive deal... (Score:2)
And, it occurs to me, that if you have the hardware / software / net connection, you could run multiple farming sessions at the same time with a single person. (Perhaps this thought is evidence of the fact that I've spent less than twenty hours and zero dollars in MMOs
Re:Oddly attractive deal... (Score:1)
Ridiculous? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, if I'm reading this correctly, People are suing NCSoft, because rogue groups stole these peoples identities and created accounts with those identities. Is this even NCSofts problem (other than fixing the problem when the real people step forward).>
So next time my car is stolen and driven into a bank during a heist, I can sue the bank? Thats what is is coming across as to me at least.
Re:Ridiculous? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ridiculous? (Score:2)
Money you deposited in your bank is stolen from the bank. It comes to light that the money you deposited was kept in a shoebox on somebody's desk (instead of, say, in a safe). Should not the bank be liable for not having better security measures?
ID Numbers (Score:2)
Are these ID numbers the equivelant of SSNs? It seems like they are a bit less protected seeing as how you have to use them to register for things as mundane as games...whereas in the US I believe it would be illegal for an MMO to ask for that. Is the reason they use the stolen IDs so that they cannot get busted for farming? Or are they trying to bypass having to pay a monthly fee, there
Re:ID Numbers (Score:4, Informative)
In order to play MMOs on Korean servers, you must have a Korean SSN so that you can register. To get a SSN, you have to actually live in South Korea, or be from South Korea. If you don't have one, you either have to steal it, or you simply don't play on their servers.