Monday, March 8, 2010

Yoville YoCash Fiasco and Hackers

I recently purchased a Yoville account with 3900 YoCash for $150 and I thought it was a very good bargain. I was getting 6 times more YoCash for paying 50 bucks more than Zynga's offer of 650 Yocash for $100.

I shopped like a maniac in game. It was fun but the fun lasted one day. Zynga brought the axe and banned the account I bought and my other playing account.

I contacted them as usual for their wrong actions but I guess it was me who had committed wrong this time because of my ignorance and greed. Customer service told me that it was illegal for me to buy Yoville accounts. I even felt guiltier when they told me that the YoCash account that I recently purchased had used a stolen US credit card that made a purchased somewhere in Serbia.

I really felt bad now for buying that account and decided to confront the seller. I told her about the incident and asked if I can get a refund. She declined the refund. She sounded sincere though in live chat and asked for apologies and told me she never knew it was a stolen account and that she is just a reseller and bought it from someone in the United Kingdom. She added too that from time to time she buy an account like the one she sold me for $40 US Dollars from a guy in Russia. I never understand why she said that but I guess she felt bad about the situation too. I asked for her phone number but she did not gave it because she told me it will be expensive for me to call her in Hong Kong.

Looking back at the entire incident I think Yoville 3rd party market is being run by illegal operations abroad that is involved in stealing credit cards. Who knows, people might be using those stolen credit cards to fund other illegal activities or even worse terrorism. I come to this conclusion because every time I look at a Yoville 3rd party website selling coins, there is no address listed, no phone numbers.

Another factor to check out is that these sellers are using Plimus because Paypal and Google Checkout don't allow sellers from certain countries. Don't get me wrong, Plimus is a good payment system and it is much more secure than Paypal or Google but it is sad that they are being utilize by other people. If these sellers are truly in the US they should be using Paypal or Google Checkout and there are only 2-3 Yoville sellers that are in the US.

If you put logic into it, 3900 YoCash is worth $600 US dollars. How can these people afford to sell it at $150 or in case of the supplier for the Hong Kong girl $40? Even if you do the subscription and services that Zynga offers to acquire YoCash for free it won't be enough to make an account for Yoville with 3900 YoCash. So these clearly shows that those account in 3rd party market are hacked/duped credit cards.

I learned my lesson and I hope you don't have to follow my footsteps. Buying YoCash accounts mean you are supporting these kind of illegal activities. One day it might be your credit card that they will use for buying YoCash. I don't advise you to buy from Zynga either since their customer support is worse. Zynga only cares about money but there are other 3rd party websites out there that are based in the US that are discreet and believe don't deal with hacking activities.

Take care and always remember that not everything that glitters are gold. Don't let greed and ignorance be your guide.

Followers