Virtual world is no game
Identity theft, fraud, virtual mugging and even virtual rape are among the crimes being committed in cyberspace as millions of people worldwide interact in virtual worlds and through online role-playing games.
We have come across this interesting phenomenon as part of our work, which includes studying the effect of technologies such as insecure wireless networking, mobile phones, iPods and the internet, and their links to crime.
Virtual worlds such as Second Life (a 3-D world where users can socialise and connect using voice and text chat) or the large multi-player games such as World of Warcraft have become very popular, with recent figures (www.mmogchart.com) suggesting there are currently 16,000,000 subscribed users. More than 62 per cent of these users are subscribed to World of Warcraft.
