BEWARE: Attack of The Hack

[Skiorahar]

This story begins one night a couple of weeks ago. I was about to purchase platinum through the in game store. In the process of selecting the amount i wished to purchase, which was 75 platinum, the application had completely closed down and my phone was acting very unusual. This all happened before i even logged into paypal to select and accept the purchase. After re-logging into my PL account, i once again logged into paypal and purchased 75 platinum. Then proceeding back to my PL account , i noticed that i suddenly had 220 platinum. After which i emailed support at spacetime to make them aware of the issue. At first I had thought that this was just some freak accident. Until today.


Today my account suddenly said that i have purchased and spent 5800 platinum in 2 months. Also, my credit card bill for April shows $1200 in various charges that were not mine. I have deduced that this information was somehow acquired through PL using my own screen name (of course i didn't lend my name and password to anyone like a fool). Seeing as how gold was actually purchased with platinum several times(for very large amounts) Not only did this person use the info for PL, but they had also used it for random other purchases using my PayPal account. How this is possible i do not know, But i Have already emailed Spacetime Studios Support and have yet to receive a response. I feel as though this issue might have been easier to resolve a couple of weeks ago when i had first noticed a problem. Not that PL or Spacetime is at fault, however

It is our responsibility and obligation as members of the PL community to

a) respect other people
b) follow the PL toS (which legally prohibits such behavior)
c) be a decent human being and not ruin other peoples gaming experience

My girlfriend and I have dedicated alot of Time to this game. We have loved playing it from the very beginning. It's a great way to have fun, meet people, kill time, and have all the fun of FF or Wow in your pocket. We've spent many hours making our characters awesome... and in the mean time helping friends finish cyber quests and mystery armor quests (which as a 55/56 is hard to bring yourself to do again), and we have even given away gold to lower levels or helped new players get gear for their chars. However, I now find myself very disturbed and almost fearful to play Pl and BlackStar(which we reserved our names for already).

We love playing Pl, grinding the hideout for pinks for hours on end, Helping people out with custom recipes so they have the right ingredients to forge, but now it makes us wonder why people have to be so self righteous, that they put themselves on a pedestal, flaunt their supposed "elitism" and unremorsefully steal from other individuals just because they have learned how to do it. Granted, if i were able to do such things I would feel very intelligent about how I know my way around a keyboard, but theres a moral boundary that you cross when you go from using your knowledge for the betterment of humanity to stealing random individuals credit card numbers because you dont want to go to work in the morning. With great power comes great responsibility and as PL players we have a responsibility to each other. I do not know what the outcome of this situation will be, but i hope that this may be a lesson for other people. Please respect each other guys, life is too short.


Sincerely,

Iedidale/Skiorahar



P.S.

If there is any thing that anyone can do help,
or has any advice (that isn't obvious), please let us know.

[pwnpear]

Im so sorry! I feel your pain :(. I'm assuming someone got your password for your paypal? Oh...i doubt this is the reason but does your phone or device have a password? and your wifi too?

[Skiorahar]

My wifi does have a password, however my phone does not. I plan on looking into some sort of password protection, but I'm leary of those sorts of things because i don't want to brick my phone after rooting.

[NeoQueen]

Wow...all I can do is shake my head and say some people. And although we commiserate it is a very slim chance that the person who did this to you will see this and be morally touched. People who do things like this are so corrupt that a post like this will probably be a laugh.

Just make sure you cancel that card and close the account and maybe find a different way to pay. I think it's a long shot that they simply hacked the PL account. More likely they got access to your paypal account and saw your purchases.

Either way I hope you can resecure your information. Good Luck!

[Ladylove]

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/x384/blcochrane/11d30f97-39e2-474f-bd22-e75410d8ac56.jpg

[Otukura]

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/x384/blcochrane/11d30f97-39e2-474f-bd22-e75410d8ac56.jpg

http://fakeposters.com.s3.amazonaws.com/results/2011/05/30/1rot2oumk5.jpg

[matamurman]

I use a walmart debit card and only put enough money on it to buy plat and other purcheses online and not my bank debit/credit card just for that reason I feel safer cause once the moneys off the card it can't be used, the card was free and only $3 a month for a fee to have and can put money on it at anytime. Sorry abou what happened and that much money is hard to recover from $1200 is mor than some ppl make a month.

[Physiologic]

Today my account suddenly said that i have purchased and spent 5800 platinum in 2 months. Also, my credit card bill for April shows $1200 in various charges that were not mine. I have deduced that this information was somehow acquired through PL using my own screen name (of course i didn't lend my name and password to anyone like a fool). Seeing as how gold was actually purchased with platinum several times(for very large amounts) Not only did this person use the info for PL, but they had also used it for random other purchases using my PayPal account.

Your PL account showed you purchased 5800 Platinum?

edit: Now that I think about it, there's some other things that need further clarification. Your story begins "a couple of weeks ago" but these Platinum purchases has been going on for "2 months." How did you miss all these transactions in your, presumably, monthly statements?

Anyway, this is entirely easy to trace since Platinum purchases require the purchaser to submit a PL account e-mail address and password.

[Orcish]

WiFi isn't secure at all even with password protection, its very easy to decrypt.... I suspect 4 culprits, WiFi decryption (local), a "friend", some sort of key logger, phishing scam? Those would be my top 4 suspects so long as everything else is legitimate.

[Fyrce]

This sounds "local" to the poster.

[asommers]

Gather a list of all fraudulent transaction ids from Paypal and send them to support(at)spacetimestudios.com. We'll take care of it.

-ALS

[Phoenixking]

What if its other stuff that also needs a resolution but how?

[LADYHADASSA]

Spacetime studios are very vigilant with their buisness with many thanks..

For all others please take note for those who have palingro...
For over 5 years i have gamed in godfather games aka land of the hackers... It has come to my attention that some god father gamers have learned how to hack palingro and many other games.. From experiences over there there are some crackers there that are abke to atting udid numbers. This number acesses ALL your devises.. Be VERY carful in places such as palingro and other online games, i had one i pod my udid was stolen, i have had clones in palingro and had people reset, or alter other game accounts. This tyoe of behavior is possible, BUT... spacetime studios has by far the best protective wall above all other apps i have experienced, they are also very vigelant to the community og PL. This is the first game I have played wherebwar of the machines has not taken over player fun.

i without question trust in this team to block and capture the crackers.

iF anyone has issue please alert them asap, if it si a weekend or holiday response may be slower. iF you feel there is an error just, gomto i tunes and remove your billing, you can not update anything in the time you remove your billing charge, but this will prevent fraud, until the issue can be investigated.

[Ladylove]

http://fakeposters.com.s3.amazonaws.com/results/2011/05/30/1rot2oumk5.jpg

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/x384/blcochrane/129157480399137911.gif

[Swimmingstar]

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/x384/blcochrane/129157480399137911.gif

:banana: beats all dun dun dun!

[Skiorahar]

Well, it seems as though SpaceTime Studios very great with helping us out with this problem.
They were able to refund all of the money.
And they even found the hacker.
It was apparently me.
Yeah, supposedly we don't have a plausible enough reason for the purchase of the platinum.
Oh and by the way, they somehow believed that all of our purchases were fraudelant, which is not the case.
So the solution to ultimately solving our problem was to ban the people who were victims of identity theft.
Basically, we had a couple fake purchases on our account that were to completely screw with us.
Then whoever hacked us used our Paypal account for other stuff not game related< but for some reason it was me who did it.
Why would i come and ask SpaceTime for help, only to get myself banned.
Just a forewarning everyone, if you have any problems with your account, Spacetime Studios will help...... :(

[Arterra]

first thing i thought of when i saw the title was this

http://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/thumb/d/d1/Glitch_City_Map1.jpg/300px-Glitch_City_Map1.jpg

im so sad i was never tried to get here when i had the game...

[NoTT]

Heres how it probally happened....

You told someone your itunes pw, or someone got it via KL.

They decided it would be hilarious, if they bought random junk with your paypal, and added a few inches to their troll horns.

Then they bought some moderately chilled carbonated beverages, using your paypal Via Ebay.

Then as they drank the beverages, they burped and then lullllleeeeed for hours.

Thats what happened, judging by the facts.

[StompArtist]

Hey. I have had similar issues with paypal transactions in the past. This may not be fraudulent at all, did you call paypal to discuss and are the transactions all seconds apart? I have had the issue when my phone would loose connection and refresh while a transaction was being processed. Got the same charge about 10 times, this was a ebay purchase. As soon as I called paypal they rectified the situation.

[Snakespeare]

I am finding it difficult to follow the OP's last post, but it sounds like STS refunded all his money and then shut down the account. Well, what else can they do? If there is a hacker using that account info, then the account has to be shut down. He's got his money back, but he loses his level 56 character.

Hopefully his GF can help him level a new character, if he still wants to play. And if he doesn't, he's got his money back.

A good password is the answer, and changing your pass frequently. Don't just use something like your pet's name. Find a book you like a lot and randomly open it to any page, and blindly point at a line. Then write down* the line numbers, the first three words, and the page number. Who can crack that?

* = I just realized that it might be better to put a bookmark on that page rather than write it down. Also, use L33T text if necessary to make it even harder to crack.

[Futumsh]

Frankly, if you've got someone using your paypal account to buy platinum for your own PL account, and you're then spending that platinum to improve your own characters, your account security is not the problem.

[Ayc2000]

lol, that makes sense...