The online gaming community is growing today faster than ever. And, companies and studios are also pushing their boundaries to keep up with new titles and options for online gaming. Even more, VR and AR are making a firm stand for online gamer to use their platforms and offer feedback. Thus, new companies like Twitch and game streaming services are trying to leverage this new area to stay relevant to the next decade of online gamer.
- Account Theft
Probably one of the most widely adopted methods is to steal other?s identities and compromise their accounts. It is easy since you just need a username and password, and that makes hackers an easy target. For many people, account theft is a normal daily task, and that is expensive. For example, your ?WoW? account including all leveling up and finding new items can cost you upwards of $5000. This is serious money.
Thus, hackers steal your identity and ask for ransom or other financial favors in return for the same. In the online community, it most often takes a simple email sent by admins of the gaming companies to confirm the user?s password and a link to a fake site that looks identical is attached. Now, when a user enters their credentials they would get hijacked. This is all that is required and it is done.
- Malicious Casinos
One of the most promising avenues of online gaming is the rapid and rampant increase of online casinos. In fact, most of the online gamer come from the gambling community where they can play slots and gamble on various items through their smartphones. So much so that they can even take part in real live bets sitting at the comfort of their home. The industry is making billions of dollars every year just through this.
A common tactic used here is to set up fake online casinos and will happily take your bests, make you win and add money to your account, but will never pay you back. To draw you in these casinos will promise a lot of goodies and ridiculous amounts of bonus, free plays and more. It is sometimes very hard to distinguish between real casinos which also adopt the same strategies to make more money.
- In-Game Trade
Finally, the third form of scam is the in-game purchases that have recently surged rocket high. In the last year alone, the top game PUBG made over 160 million. This makes it easier for people to trade for fake money or sell items at many higher costs and this is really a scam. To prevent this it is important to be vigilant to these tactics. It is therefore important to trade with people only whom you trust and this is also often tricky because online gamer change on a daily basis and there is no clue.
Conclusion
At the same time, this possesses new threats to the community, cyber threats. Some perils can attack even your identity online and lead to severe problems.