Posted in Extremism/Terrorism on June 28, 2007 | No Comments »
The article below from the Jamestown Foundation illustrates a new and more organized version of electronic jihad. Given the growing sophistication of the genre it can’t be long before this leaks over into virtual worlds.
Forum Users Improve Electronic Jihad Technology
By Abdul Hameed Bakier
A previous issue of Terrorism Focus exposed a jihadi website dedicated solely to [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on June 27, 2007 | 1 Comment »
(Opinion/Comment)
Classically MMORPG’s and Virtual Worlds did not, or could not, be translated very well into a games console environment. A number of pressures existed regarding the technology, the need for updates and compatibility issues with PC users. This (classically) would seem to be a bit of a shame considering the size of the market share that the console [...]
Posted in Money Laundering, News on June 26, 2007 | 1 Comment »
McAfee now sees more malware programmed to steal passwords for World of Warcraft now than trojans aiming for banking information, said Craig Schumager of the McAfee research labs. In talks with Erik Larkin at PCWorld.com, he outlined why fake game gold is more attractive than real money. Primarily, there’s less risk of getting caught and [...]
Posted in Extremism/Terrorism, Money Laundering on June 25, 2007 | No Comments »
They have many generic names; underground banking, parallel banking and so forth. Indeed, specific remittance systems many be known to you as Hawala, Hundi or Da shu gong si. The Financial Action Task Force groups all of these together under one generic name: an Alternate Remittance System (ARS). A system of transferring monies from one [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on June 22, 2007 | No Comments »
For more commentary on legal issues relating to virtual worlds see the blog Virtually Blind.
Posted in News on June 21, 2007 | No Comments »
Many thanks to Chris Valance over at the BBC for highlighting MetaSecurity on the BBC Pods & Blogs section here. As a frequent listener to many BBC Radio 5 Live shows (Which you can download from the BBC archive) I can highly recommend his show (and a number of others, their football coverage in particular also being [...]
Posted in Crime, Legal on June 20, 2007 | 2 Comments »
The excellent commentator on Second Life — Gwyneth Llewelyn recently published a piece in her blog entitled: From Welfare State to Laissez-Faire Capitalism. The blog itself is always worth reading for the insight it provides relating to the history and future of Second Life. Of interest to MetaSecurity was the section of the article relating [...]
Posted in Crime, Extremism/Terrorism, Money Laundering, News on June 18, 2007 | No Comments »
From UPI News here
Outside View: Terror, crime go digital
By RACHEL EHRENFELD and JOHN WOOD
UPI Outside View Commentators
NEW YORK, May 23 (UPI) — Emerging digital technologies to move money instantaneously and anonymously open up new possibilities for criminals and terrorists, while regulatory and law-enforcement agencies are limping far behind.
On May 3, at the release of the [...]
Posted in Crime, Fraud, Legal, Money Laundering, Uncategorized on June 18, 2007 | No Comments »
In my crawlings around the internet, I often come across a number of interesting documents which are related to my research, both into virtual worlds in general and sometimes into potential crimimal activities in them. And with the idea in mind that there is far too little interaction between the research community and professionals sometimes, [...]
Posted in Money Laundering on June 18, 2007 | 2 Comments »
An interesting piece in New World Notes relating to Second Life usage figures. Using Linden Lab user stats the blog of Millions of Us was able to show where the most active Second Life users are based - quote from the Millions of Us blog:
Here are the first ten countries where Second Life Residents are [...]
