Spam News

Sony cracking down on in-game MMORPG spam

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Sony Online Entertainment, the creator of massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG) like EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies, is using in-game detectives to crack down on the proliferation of players hired by third parties to spread spam.

Reuters reported that Sony created the Norathian Underground Gnome Investigation Team (NUGIT), to patrol the online world of EverQuest in search of players who spam other players with unsolicited offers to sell virtual items, called "farming."

"People get very frustrated when they see spam. It's the equivalent of junk mail and you're getting this in-game and it's very frustrating," said John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment, according to Reuters.

The hugely popular MMORPG World of Warcraft has been a target of cybercriminals who use phishing spam and Trojan malware to steal players' login names and passwords.

Trojans that steal passwords for MMORPGs were the most commonly removed malware by Microsoft's anti-malware tool in August.

Microsoft said it removed the Trojan Win32/Taterf, a family of worms that steal account details for popular MMORPG games, from 463,000 PCs in August.