Credit Card Fraud involving Blizzard Entertainment

allsmiles277

Paul Sams
BOX 18979
IRVINE, CA 92623
(949) 955-1380

allsmiles277

Julia Gastaldi
BOX 18979
IRVINE, CA 92623
(949) 955-1380

allsmiles277

Mike Morhaime is the president and a co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, a video game developer located in Irvine, California and currently owned by the Vivendi Games group of Vivendi. Vivendi Games (formerly known as Vivendi Universal Games) is a global developer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment. Vivendi Games is a 100% subsidiary of Vivendi SA. Vivendi SA (formerly known as Vivendi Universal) is a French media conglomerate with activities in music, television and film, publishing, telecommunications, the Internet as well as video games.

allsmiles277

December 2: Vivendi announced that their subdivision Vivendi Games would be merging Activision to form Activision Blizzard. Vivendi will be the major shareholder in this merger holding a 52% to 68% (pending results of the tender offer) stake of the newly formed company

allsmiles277

MIKE MORHAIMEBOX 18979
Irvine, CA 92623MIKE MORHAIMEBOX 18979
Irvine, CA 92623(949) 955-1380(949) 955-1380

QueenServilla

Somehow someway someone got a hold of my debit card account number & expiration date and made over 25 charges to NC Soft and Blizzard Entertaiment/WOW.

There were over 20 charges alone for subscription fees made within two months. You would think Blizzard would have noticed that the same account number was being used to for monthly subscription fees!!!

Fortunately I was able to recoup all my money, but to those who say Blizzard is a reputable company I say !!!!!!!!!! If they were they would have better security in place to catch people who use stolen credit cards. And they wouldn't simply toss out stupid answers when you inform them of fraud. I received an email stating, "Perhaps your friends or a relative used your card!"

They could cease over 90% of their fraud cases if they would verify the following information:

1) The caller's address matches the address on the card
2) Make sure the caller has the CVC number on the back of the card
3) Flag any account number that comes in more than twice a month.
4) Question any american credit/debit card that is being used from a foreign country.

Quite easy and simple:mad: . I lost over $1,000. Fortunately I was able to recoup my losses but I wonder how many people do NOT recoup their losses

harryhound

To put a little perspective into this debate about fraud (A bigger and safer criminal business than drugs), I have done a quick Google:

Here in the UK we are likely to be lumbered with a national ID card, based on finger prints (that will generate thousands of false positives and put another cloud over the reputation of honest citizens).

The only thing that is likely to be reasonably secure on-line at the moment is the clever little gizmo you have to carry around that generates a once only access number each time you use your chip card BUT it costs. A lot of third world countries need the hard currency that their fraud gangs "earn" for their bombed out economies.

The FT (Financial Times) is something like the USA's Wall Street Journal. To convert GBP into USD just double the figures will be near enough, as the dollar sets in the West..

Sandra Quinn is a "spokes-person" for the UK banking's payments system and gets wheeled out every time there is a need to put an optimistic spin on the latest (bad) news. She is becoming another Goolge anti hero.
It's a rotten job, but somebody has got to do it.
She has a competitor called Angela Knight, who seems to be getting the better news stories these days:D
http://ftadviser.com/FTAdviser/Insurance/News/article/20080312/39fdaf52-f02a-11dc-bfbb-0015171400aa/Credit-card-fraud-reaches-record-levels.jsp

http://www.saveborrowspend.co.uk/articles/feature/1203-credit-cards-ten-terrible-truths

http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/sec/2008/0310sec1.html

(read the comments added to get a realistic feel of what really happens especially in USA)

Harry.

RandomRabbit

To all of you who are mad at Blizzard and other online companies, I assure you, those companies are losing hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars due to this fraud. Seriously. The number is that high. I can think of a few better places to direct your anger:

- The store or site that allowed your credit card info to be stolen. Places that store your CVC number, address, and other personal information they don't need (or in fact are required not to store) should bear the brunt of the anger for storing that information and/or having shoddy security.

- VISA/Mastercard. Currently, the large banks have no insentive to really crack down on this. When mass fraud like this happens, they make money on the transaction fees and the fines they level against Blizzard for having so many fraudulant transactions. Blizzard is not only loses the entire transaction to a refund, they also are out the fees and the fines. If Blizzard would like to take legal action to recover those damages, the banks are no help in aiding Blizzard to find the places responsible for leaking stolen credit card data in the first place (the people liable for the loss).

- The thieves. Yep, the people who stole the card info are the real culprits. They unfortunately are largely untrackable.

John_Pierpoint

These may be the guys that you are up against:

http://www.bolton.ac.uk/News/News-Articles/2008/apr2008-2.aspx

or they might not be addicts, but just "gold farming" for the money.

Probably a mixture of the two.

MatthiasPyck

Hello,

I want to report that I was hit three times this week, althougt I do not play WOW at all. However, in the past, I paid WOW for my sons with this mastercard. Are they leaking information?


My last official transactions were
- Ryanair.com
- Hertz.com
- h[EMAIL="s@hotels-world.com"]otels-world.com[/EMAIL]

I don't know how they got my details. All last transactions were done under https;//

Fraud transactions where.
19/04 BLIZZARD CHARACTER S!!!!HORPE GB 19,05 €
19/04 BLIZZARD CHARACTER S!!!!HORPE GB 19,05 €
21/04 CHARACTER TRANSFER WOW VELIZY-VILLAC FR 20 €

I am terrible sorry but WOW is not checking decently the details of their potential clients. By doing so, in one way, they are stimulating fraud.

Kind regards,

Matthias