Posted in Crime, Money Laundering on March 4, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The Australian Institute of Criminology last year published a rather large risk assessment document looking at very near-future directions of technology enabled crimes which is available on the Australian Government Website. Though the entire document itself makes for a fascinating read, of interest to myself in particular was this section discussing virtual worlds:
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Online gaming and gambling
Online gaming, [...]
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Posted in Crime on November 14, 2007 | No Comments »
‘Virtual theft’ leads to arrest
From BBC -
Habbo Hotel users create a character and can buy furniture
A Dutch teenager has been arrested for allegedly stealing virtual furniture from “rooms” in Habbo Hotel, a 3D social networking website. The 17-year-old is accused of stealing 4,000 euros (£2,840) worth of virtual [...]
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Sky News (the UK arm of the News Corps TV news network) has run a story on the use of Second Life by virtual pedophiles. Seen here on You Tube.
These stories aren’t new but the Sky News report was well done and actually showed the sites used by those engaged in what is [...]
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Social-networking has been the dominant theme describing almost every new Internet based software application to emerge over the past two years. MySpace, Facebook and Second Life, to name the most prominent applications, have all prospered on the promise and realization of creating a community online. But while they have moved relentlessly forward the platforms have [...]
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The Symantec Corp’s latest report on the security threat to the Internet (Vol.XII) has some interesting detail on the increasing attempts to hack virtual worlds and the lure of their virtual currencies. Link here.
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Posted in Crime, News on July 23, 2007 | No Comments »
This is kind of old news but the ongoing court case between two avatars in Second Life has bought PayPal into the fray (as reported by Reuters). PayPal has agreed to comply with a subpoena to release details that relate to one of the avatars accounts. This arguably paves the way to the end [...]
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Posted in Crime, Legal, News on July 3, 2007 | No Comments »
The Vancouver Police Department are opening a presence in Second Life this Thursday. According to the article in the Vancouver Sun the aim is to recruit new officers in Second Life but the project also realizes that cyber crime is a growing concern and virtual worlds are part of that trend.
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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, [...]
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