Account theft

[JonSlaughter]

My father and nephew(15 years old) have been playing a computer game called DAOC for the last couple of years. My nephew was "conned" into giving his account information two guys(there was two guys) in the game. They said they would give him lots of stuff if he gave them his account login and password so they could log in to them to help him.

The guys then logged into the account and proceded to delete all the characters(which took many years to build up) and surely took all the "belongings" they had in the characters and transfered them to there own.

My father contacted Mythic enteratinment, but they have refused to do anything about it. He has decided to get a lawyer involved but we are having trouble finding one that will be computer savvy enough to handle this sort of incident.

I am wondering what are the possible legal ramifications one has in a situation like this? While my nephew did give them his account, they had surely scamed him and he was being naive. I was able to retrive a partial log of the conversation that took place and I have the character names of the people that did this but to get the information about who these people are, the company must trace the character names to the accounts(which is surely not difficult), but so far they refuse to look into it. Surely these guys have violated there EULA and deserve some type of punishment.

(I personally think they are criminally negligible as it is no different than con artists and the company is negligible for not commiting to there EULA that as been violated)

I have searched for several competent lawyers in cyberspace crime but I have not found anyone that seems like they could handle this well.

What should I do? The main thing we need to get a hold of is the logs and names of those guys that have done this. (i.e., it is nothing difficult, yet I think a lawyer would need to understand computer networking to be able to put together a case against those guys... ). The damage they have done consists of about 5-7hrs per day total for around 3-4 years avg. I am not sure how to get the company to take us seriously though ;/

Thanks, Jon.

P.S. the main reason my father wants to pursue this is because he believes that there are many more victims and that the company is not doing anything about it. I personally thing that it is a waste of money and it would be very difficult to get any results(after all, it was very stupid of my nephew to do that, but those guys do deserve punishment for taking advantage of him).

 

[RyTRiX]

I'm not sure you have a case. All accounts and information contained on the accounts are property of the game network owners.

 

[JonSlaughter]

If thats the case, then you are saying that they must have gave permission for the guys to delete the stuff? The whole point is, is that mythic is not giving us this guys name and address so we can file charges specially against him.. Its possible the guy was able to get information that he could use for identity theft and/or credit card fraud.

It does specically say in the EULA that:

"In no event shall mythic entertainment be held responsible for any damage that occurs to your account, your characters or their possessions in the event your passwrds are disclosed, nor is mythic liable for any financial or emotional damage or distress you may suffer and/or for subsequent loss of damage to your account, characters, and any and all of their possesions as a result of the disclosure of your passwords to a thrid part."

Ok, fine then.. I would expect that of them cause they are just trying to cover there ass. But do you really think its legal for them to allow this "third" party to potentially commit fraud by not relinquishing his information?

Again, in the EULA it says that:

"Mythic owns accounts, account attributes, characters, items and objects."

ok then, so they must have gave him the right enter the account and take the items and transfer them to his characters, delete the characters, then change account information and then possibly steal that information?

http://support.darkageofcamelot.com/kb/article.php?id=073

"
1. Harass, threaten or embarrass another Player of the Services or to cause distress, unwanted attention or discomfort of such Player, or any other person or entity. Mythic does not condone harassment in any form and may suspend or terminate the account of any Player who harasses others. Personal attacks, such as those based on a person's race, national origin, ethnicity, religion, gender, lifestyle choice, disablement or other such affiliation, are strictly prohibited.
10. Violate, intentionally or unintentionally, any applicable local, state, national or international law or regulation.
11. Modify any files that Mythic does not specifically authorize Player to modify. Use of material which is subject to the rights of any person or entity without the express permission of such rights holder is prohibited, and will result in the termination of Player's membership and possible civil and/or criminal liability."

Also

"If an account has been stolen, hacked, or in any other way compromised, we will suspend the account, to protect the characters and items within, while we investigate fully. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause, and we will complete the investigation in as timely a manner as possible. Once a thorough investigation has been performed, we will determine the appropriate course of action.
Once our investigation is complete, if we find someone who is involved with hacking or theft of accounts, they will have all of their accounts banned. "

The last paragraph has been clearly violated as neither they have even attempted to investigate or did they suspend the account to save the information(The incident occured on a weekend, which they are no open for business, so only way to contact them was through email, which ofcourse will only be replied to when they open for business).

The point I am trying to make is that they have not done anything they should do and say they would do and someone needs to make them do it. This is a bad business practice and they should be held accountable for it. While they might not be responsible for the damages caused directly by the incident, they should be accountable for any damages caused for refusing to act on it when it was brought to there attention. Specially since they could have implemented better practices to make this sort of things much more difficult(this is just evidience they don't care, which might not be criminal, but just shows how much they really care about there customers).

Also, what they two guys did was a con... and as far as I know, a con is illegal, and hence mythic allows this criminal behavior to continue and hence is that not criminal too?

Jon

 

[awasner]

its like I keep saying

It's like I keep saying, you spend years to create it and it can be taken away from you, and "they" keep saying you have no recourse.
Well, that's got to change.
Internet gamers need to have rights like regular people.

What you are talking about is dispicable and yet it happens all the time because no one seems willing to break new legal ground and do something about it.

 

[sadiq]

it's not against the law because there are probably no criminal statutes that mythic is violating. Not even close.

If you find a lawyer with a lot of free time (good luck), you could sue under breach of contract, because you had the expectation that your character would be at least somewhat protected from hacking because there would be consequences. But then on the other hand, Mythic has PROBABLY given notice to all their customers that they will never be asked for their account information.

Also, what would your damages be? Your nephew was playing a game. He wasn't doing work. While I have played RPG's and I know how your heart and soul can go into a character, it is, when all is said and done, a game. The characters and the items would eventually disappear anyway. A judge would laugh you out of the court room, if it even reached that stage.

 

[JonSlaughter]

Lets suppose that instead it was a piece of art work. Lets suppose that you spend 3 years creating a painting, not to sale but because you enjoyed it.

Now lets suppose some burgular came in and stole it... or in the process of him breaking into your house he tore up the painting. Is it ok that he did that? There are no civil ramifications against that person for doing that? Even though it was criminal for breaking into your house just because it wasn't created in the process of "work" makes what the burgular did A-OK?

Sure a judge may laugh but the fact is that it is wrong and criminal to steal from other people. Just cause this guy did it online doesn't make it ok. There are laws to protect people from scams and just cause mythic chooses to ignore them shouldn't make it ok.

It might not be pratical to sue them but it surely is moral(unless you believe its ok to con other people and destory there crap even if its useless crap to everyone else).

Not only is it theft of work of "art" its also theft of identity(they stole identification information from you). Lets suppose tomarrow that you get your password stolen by a hacker... I bet you will just laugh it off, right? Even if they just read all your emails then deleted them. Its ok because its just "virtual" information, right?

This is no different from a hacker using some automated method of stealing passwords as to someone using social engineering to steal passwords. Its more of a right to privacy then anything else.

Again, while it might not be pratical to pursue it surely has a legal foundation(although it might be hard to find it).