'Virtual theft' leads to arrest
A Dutch teenager has been arrested for allegedly stealing virtual furniture from "rooms" in Habbo Hotel, a 3D social networking website.
Now, let me get this right. Some idiot pays someone £2,840 for non-existent furniture to put into a non-existent hotel. Some kid comes along and is accused of stealing the non-existent furniture and the police are investigating the non-existing theft. With all the crimes in the real world to solve wouldn't the police be better investigating these than wasting time getting involved with a virtual world?
Maybe they will give him a virtual fine, maybe some virtual community service or a virtual prison term(with time off due to over crowding)
ReplyDeleteI used Habbo a number of years ago when it was shiny and new. This kind of thing has been going on since then. Basically, you can change the settings for your virtual room that allows anybody to come in and move your furniture around, and if memory serves me right, you can even adjust settings to allow people to pick up your furniture.
ReplyDeleteIt does have its uses. Some rooms are quite complex and the owners use the furniture to provide interactive objects. For example you can create a roped off area in a virtual club room and in order for guests to move the ropes themselves they need the above access granted.
So, in order for somebody to come along and take the furniture the room owner either adjusted their settings to allow it to be picked up, or the account was compromised. If the account was compromised then the owner of that account should be dragged off to some virtual prison for being so stupid enough to give out their password or have one that's just too easy.
No sympathy for the victim here. This is a stupid thing that's happened and it shouldn't have blown up in the way it has.