The Dangers of Buying Plat and/or Power Leveling services

I would like to see an email sent stating that information is being requested to be changed. Click on the link below to VIEW these changes, then select Verify or Deny.
My bank account does not allow me to change anything if I'm logging in from a different IP or PC, where's this level of security from SOE? (You can change IP/PC's with a pho0ne call and account verification that is only in internal company records).

The problem is, ordinary consumer customers forget their account verification info, or lose their email account at the same time they lose their password.

Azag@Crushbone wrote:

Oh come on now. This is your gaming account. Not your 401k retirement account.

That sort of security costs a lot of money to implement in to an already existing system. And, it is even more expensive to maintain as it means a huge spike in customer service calls on an ongoing basis. This sort of security is very affordable to a company which is funded by billions of dollars in deposits each day. Not a division of a company that receives $15 each month from you.

Its very simple to keep your accounts safe. And, the advice has already been put out there many times which is very effective if adhered to. Do not give out your password. Do not use the same password on another website. Keep your computer secure by updating it with the latest anti-virus and spyware definitions.

Anything beyond those measures and one is asking a gaming company to take extra steps just to compensate for people's lack of common sense. And, to be honest. That's not their job. It was your parent's job when they were raising you.

A good real time scanner (av) like trends pccillin or even kaspersky anti-virus are both good tools to stop those trojan banners!

But accts can be compromised with something as inconspicuous as saving information in an insecure area. Or a keylogger. I think though, someone out there has made some addon/plugin (possibly a hack) and me thinks this hack hooks eq2 launchpad and records login data.

They websites got hacked theory is plausible, but I think you would find every member of those sites in eq2 would then be compromised, not just a few.

Below is merely an example of how this could happen....
You install newest version of lootdb from lootdb.com or is it? Eq2map updater? Not saying these programs are illegitimate (they arent both addons work excellently) but addons/custom uis, etc. can ALL contain keyloggers/trojans. Make sure you KNOW what you are downloading, and WHERE you are downloading it from. Fresh files always do a scan with latest pattern defs from your av vendor.

Its a dang shame when you can't even play an mmorpg without scammers/thieves stealing things.

Avast is fantastic. Beats Norton hands down, as well as McAfee. The "Home User" version is free, the corporate version is where they make the money. Home version is their "Play the Fae"; people use it and recommend it from there.

Spyderbite@Venekor wrote:

(( AHA!!! I Knew'd joo was a pl@t Buyer!!! *points finger and ducks*



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I may be new to EQII, but I'm not new to the idea of RMT and account hackings. I still play another major MMO that has been absolutely hammered by stolen accounts, and I see that a lot of the same precautions are being stated here. However, I see a few that haven't been addressed in this thread, so thought I'd toss my .02 in the ring.

If you are surfing the net and using Firefox, get and use the NoScript and AdBlock add-ons. Learn to love them. Make sure NO IFRAMES is turned on in NoScript. If you're a novice PC user, this may seem like a small inconvenience for a little while, but after getting used to it, you'll be thankful for the protection it gives you.

A lot of RMT hackers don't necessarily "hack" your favorite community websites. All they have to do is create an ad that is distributed throughout the gaming websites that use commercial ad placement systems like Adsense, etc. The community website may not even know that there is an infected ad on their site until it's reported to them. All it takes to get the virus/trojan/keylogger on your system is for the ad to load on your screen. With NoScript and AdBlock, you won't even see the ad on the page, and this is ONLY ONE way that the RMT hackers get you. There are many other ways, but with good protection (anti-virus, NoScript, AdBlock, AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy, good firewalls, good surfing habits), you make it that much harder for them to get you.

If you're surfing the net and not using Firefox, get it and stop using IE.

You know whats funny is i get no spam at all on my email none! And nothing from plat selling services. I just returned from almost a year being gone from eq2 and i signed up again..... and upon on signing up thru the station i got spam via email (not my eq2 mailbox, my real life email) from bout 4 different services. this is no joke either or a trick to bewindle soe. Iam a soe dedicated.

the only thing i have to say about this issue is the plat farmers and sellers are in business because WE (i dont mean me personally or anyone in particular) keep buying the plat and one reason people feel the need to buy plat is because the casual player cant afford any progression items on brokers nowadays,gear,spells collection items etc

This seems related, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohib...e_United_States

Once LiveGamer is bringing their A game if all servers went over to exchange I think a lot of these problems would go away. Just my 2 cp.

If all servers went to exchange I would quit, I have a hard enough time finding my masters on the broker; when I finally do they cost so much it is laughable (actually it makes me want to cry).
You make all servers exchange servers and it will just jack up the prices even more and make it so people can't stay on an even playing field.

It's a simple matter of supply and demand. If the supply of masters goes up then the prices gets low, when the price of a master is too low then it will be bought and transmuted for adornment materials.

In reality having your server go exchange would lower the price of your masters. You'll have sell oriented players farming nameds and flooding the market with masters regularly.

Right now on your server you have normal players buying plat, but instead of normal players for selling plat you have illegal sellers. Even on the exchange servers we had some of this, they grind generic trash mobs with good drops to avoid the publicity and /report of excessively camping nameds. The exception tends to be instances where they can pop in and farm a named, which is why certain levels of masters are so much cheaper than others.

I found this thread quite interesting so I thought I would add my 2 cents.

There were many games I had played in the past that were overrun with problems relative to virtual currency trading what the OP is explaining is exactly how gold selling companies operate as standard procedure .

If a person is a customer that interacts with a particular site they generally have some type of key logger installed in their system , often times this can happen simply by hitting the landing page of a selling site .

The gold sellers are obligated to meet their quotas by a certain deadline so the way that they guarantee this is to hack into a previous customers account that they sold currency to and remove what they find , then they place it in the new customers account who recently placed an order . This practice is more common in games that have stronger prevention toward farm bots that put a kink in the supply of the farmers .

In one game I used to play the GMs during an internal investigation met with a rep from a gold selling site and they sat down and he demonstrated the process . He had the account information of a former buyer , he accessed this account removed whatever virtual currency was in it and then put it in to the account of a new customer all within a few minutes time .

The botton line is that people who buy are sealing their fate allready and people who might be curious could be taking a risk simply by visiting these sites . The lame thing is that sometimes you dont realize that your hitting a bad site until its to late even if you didnt have any intention of doing so .

Over the years I have found that the more common anti virus / spyware products like Norton , Macafee etc are not catching things that are hidden deep in a system and they also cause a lot of bloat and use alot of resources to be running all the time , I had the same problem with Trend and Panda as far as taxing the system .

2 that I would recommend are NOD32 and Kapersky , although Kapersky uses alot of system it is one of the better products for finding root kits . NOD 32 is one of the best security products on the market .
I would also recommend Trend Micro`s " Hijack This " for checking your registry , this will tell you if anything is going on in there that shouldnt be .

solution:
just give us an option where we can choose "who can tell us".

Some kind of a Chat-Filter, where i could choose:
[x] My guildmates can /tell me
[x] A player above (e.g.) lvl 50 can /tell me
[x] A player above (e.g.) lvl 50 from other servers can /tell me
[X] A player in my group can /tell me
[x] A player in my raid can /tell me
[x] A player in my friendlist can /tell me

If any other player /tells me something he would get a reply like this:
"Sorry, but i'm not accepting tells from players below lvl 50 !"

no lvl 1 plat seller can "spam" me anymore. they have to lvl up to 50,
or be in my friendlist/guild/group/raid etc.

For those people who are not interested in plat selling services and are angry because of spam, this kind of a chat filter would be a really good spam assassin for eq2. When plat sellers recognize that they can't spread their URL anymore, maybe they go away (faster). If SOE can't change anything, maybe the playerbase can do something with this chat-filter.

Isengard@Innovation wrote:

that's so crazy it might just work

Of course you could just buy LoN boosters and flog them in game for plat. Much less risky to buy your plat from SEO eh

So, how is this inherently different than the new "station cash", except that SOE gets the money and not some plat farmer. I mean really, when you get right down to it, with station cash you are able to buy potions for real life money that help you level...which is really kind of what the plat farmers do (granted they are a lot more seedy about it and not totally trustworthy, but come on...)
Being able to buy with real money a leveling potion is just as wrong here if SOE sponsors it as if some off-shore random plat farming house does it.

Timone-SoF wrote:

I realize you have objections to Station Cash, however, this is really a stretch, and your post isn't really relevant here. You should keep your SC feedback in the threads created for it. This topic is about the danger of giving your account and/or credit card info to third parties. You're risking having your account and credit card stolen. Thats what is different about it.
In addition, all in-game items and coin are SOE's intellectual property. For someone else to sell it is really equivalent to theft. Suppose you created a really great piece of art, and you were very proud of it so you put it up on a website to show off. Then you found that someone had taken that beautiful piece of artwork and put it on their own website and was selling it to people. Do you think they have a right to make money off your work? There's no difference in third parties selling plat and someone stealing your work to make a profit off it. Although we all feel that we've earned our in-game items and plat, it isn't actually ours. It still belongs to SOE and they have the right to be the ones making a profit from it.
I also think there is a big difference between buying a potion so YOU can level faster, and paying someone ELSE to do your leveling. At least you are the one doing the work, even if there is less work to be done.

Nuadre@The Bazaar wrote:

Oh, I'm sorry, didn't realize I couldn't express my views on this open forum. So sorry.
And, for the record, I think plat buying/power leveling services are wrong also...I get that. I was just making the point that in the really big scheme of things, buying your way through the game isn't quite in the spirit of the game, whether done by plat services or buying potions with RL cash through the Station Cash business.

Timone-SoF wrote:

Two points, and then I'll be quiet:
1) They aren't saying that you can not express your views, they are saying that Station Cash issues are not relevant to this thread. There are probably between 5-10 different threads that are devoted to Station Cash. You don't like it, everyone understands, but this is not the place to post about it. This thread is about protecting yourself from having your account hacked.
2) SOE controls the game, and by virtue of that, they are the final arbiters on what is considered the "spirit of the game". We, as players, have three options: a) We can choose not to partake in the methods that allow faster advancement, and ignore the fact that others are using it, b) We can choose to utilize the available tools provided, or c) We can quit the game and find a different MMO that suits us. Simply put: If you don't like it, don't use it; if it bothers you so much, quit.