Evil Check: WoW Identity Theft

Long time readers may remember the person I dubbed Jack. Since then he has forgotten that I never really cared for him. He tended to whisper me occasionally to gloat about something. When he does it is like a CRT monitor in sleep mode. You know what I am talking about, there is that buzzing of it still on you can barely hear. It is annoying. For me, prolonged exposure gives me a mild headache, same with this kid.

You may wonder why I don’t /ignore him. Well he is a known ninja on our realm. He has picked up items to vendor where someone else in the group could use it. I have more than once been able to warn people about going on Kara PuGs with him. He seriously whispers me “Hey I just got two people from your guild to go to Kara!” Then I warn them. It is an easy system. This kid is bad news in any group.

My friend Rushie is co-GM of Farstriders Elite (FE). He is known in the Emberstorm battlegroup. Has over thirty-thousand kills in the 19 bracket. And right now is in the Army and hasn’t been near a computer in about two months.

So after I get out of Mount Hyjal and SSC, after three plus hours of raiding… I snuck over to another server to get my level 30 her mount. Husband runs into my room. “Rushie’s account just got hacked. They may have disbanded all of FE!” I got shivers. I immediately switched over to Aurum. This was our friend. His toons are in all my guilds. My chest was tight at the thought of his toons being pillaged. Husband was freaking out on me. I needed to focus him, had him open a GM ticket.

First thing I checked was FE. It was still a guild. Length of time Rushie last was on was a VERY long time. I couldn’t demote him because I was one step below in rank. First time I ever regretted NOT demanding the official rank I was suppose to have.

Two of his toons had full access to a large amount of twink gear and pure gold. I took screen shots of contents. I then proceeded to the website to make a copy of the guild bank list in on the website. I at least had an inventory. But a hacker could wipe us clean and I had no way of stopping it.

I talked to Ms. Rush who was freaking out in War Machine guild chat. Husband was talking to her. I did too. I asked if she tried changing his password on the website. She went off to do that and was able to. I started to breathe.

Jackyll with GM rights in FE finally logged on. I filled him in and was able to get Rushie’s toons demoted just in case.

What connects this kid to my friend’s potential account hacking? Identity theft.

You heard right.

This kid made a twink 19 human rogue named “Rushìe”.

… you see what he did …

He used the lowercase “i" with a grave above it. Then proceeded to think it was okay to recruit for a twink guild using said toon on MY server in the trade channel. This kid was using the real Rushie’s reputation to recruit and pretended to be him. The unsuspecting would believe him.

Most knew the real Rushie was away. No one should be on that account so the first thought was “account hacking” which triggered damage control. You had an entire raid guild and twink guild thinking a friend’s account got hacked.

I was whispering everyone letting them know that was not the real Rushie in trade and that it was this kid. Then I found out the kid and a friend of his stole a bunch of twink items from a friend’s son’s guild just the other day. The kid even admitted to stealing from our friend’s son’s guild to Jackyll. The kid then threatened Jackyll with making a toon using the likeness of his name. *yells incoherently at the screen.* This kid is a piece of work.

But is this against Blizzards terms of service? All I could think of was that it maybe against a RP realm’s naming convention to use special characters in the name. Weak I know but it was 2 am server time at this point. So I went with that in the GM ticket.

I am livid. No one messes with my friends.

Here is the thing. What if they don’t make the kid change his name? How would you feel running around Azeroth with someone with your name, using your reputation. Possibly destroying the good reputation you have built.

Evil Check: Here’s the deal. I am giving Blizzard 48 hours to make the kid change this toons name. After that… what I am going to do you ask?

I am going to have a little contest and post it on the forums. Any horde that can SS this Rushìe having more than 3 deaths then anyone else in a BG will get 70 gold. After that each SS is worth 20 gold. Not much, but maybe enough to keep it interesting. Plus I will need to earn it on some realms.

It is not totally evil because I am giving him an out… maybe mildly evil. After the worry he caused my friends, I don’t care, he is lucky to get a chance. I am refraining from doing many other things. I am holding onto them for another day.