The fine folks at World of Raids, as pointed out by tipster Akyl, have linked to this article, which informs us that 20% of all trojan viruses are aimed directly at you, the World of Warcraft player. (Don't feel too bad, as Lineage 2 gets a whopping 40% of all trojans.) That's really rather astonishing, if you think about it... just a quick search of our own site reveals several trojans made mention of on our site alone. Of course, it's not news that crooks will steal things from you, but what's news is that this is a percentage of all trojans, period. In other words, between Lineage 2 and World of Warcraft, we're seeing more than half of all cyber crime committed via trojan viruses.

Forget banks, people. The future of online theft is your character's gear. Gaming accounts are targeted by the second most common malware on the web right now according to a previous article on the PCRetail site. That seems to suggest that this kind of activity, with its uncertain legality (who do you call when someone steals you WoW password and sells all your gear, after all, the cops or Blizzard? After all, technically all your character's stuff still belongs to Blizz, and not you) and as yet uncharted waters of enforcement, is only going to get more and more common. Gaming is described several times as a 'soft target' for this kind of theft.

There's more money to be made stealing people's accounts and selling all their gold to gold buyers than in trying to steal bank account information.

Have you ever downloaded a trojan, or otherwise had your account hacked? How long did it take to get your stuff back? Did you actually get it all back?

Tags: Malware, Theft, Trojan-Virus

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Economy