TruthScape.com  9  The Truth About RuneScape Account and Password Scamming and “Hacking”       9  The Basics of Account and Password Scamming and “Hacking”

The Basics of Account and Password Scamming and “Hacking” “I Got Hacked!” - Really?

Scammers are in some ways online criminals, and understanding criminals is no simple matter—even in a multiplayer game. (Others are just confused children who have been negatively influenced into acting as if they were criminals.) Obviously all of these people are selfish and greedy, but there's usually more to the issue than just that. There are people who devote their lives to the study of criminology, and I am not one of them. So rather than trying to completely dissect the minds of account scammers, I'll instead focus on helping you understand what their motivations are - that is, some of the reasons that cause them to go after your password.

Here are the most common reasons why people scam accounts:

• Stealing Items: Steal someone's account and you have access to everything that character is wearing and carrying. If the account doesn't have a PIN on its bank account, you get everything in the bank as well. This is a major reason why passwords are stolen.
  
  
• Selling Accounts: Some scammers collect accounts that they have scammed and then resell them on the various RuneScape “black markets” for RuneScape gold.
  
  
• Exploiting for More Scams: Some scammers will hijack accounts and then use them for even more scamming. For example, they may use it in a free account item scam. This is an attempt to shield their real accounts from being tracked and banned.
  
  
• Real World Trading: There are some people who scam accounts and perform related activities specifically to sell for real world money.
  
  
• Anger/Revenge: Nasty people will sometimes engage in account scamming just to be obnoxious. They may steal an account just to be mean, or to use it for abusing others, not caring if it gets banned. In rare cases, they may actually target a specific person as an act of revenge, to take their account and then get it banned from the forums or the game.
  
  
• For the Challenge: Certain anti-social types take the attitude that there's nothing wrong with scamming others because “it's just a game”. They are in it for the “challenge” of seeing whom they can scam.

As with item scamming, the common theme in these motivations is the anonymity of the Internet, which lets the scammer ignore the fact that there are real people behind the accounts they steal. If you are an honest person it can be difficult to even relate to this sort of mentality, so it is best not to dwell on it too much. Just recognize that there is evil in the world that only views your hard work as only something to be stolen, and protect yourself.

The Basics of Account and Password Scamming and “Hacking” “I Got Hacked!” - Really?