Police said that ID thefts connected to the online game Lineage could rise to 1.2 million

Bogus Lineage accounts were used to generate virtual items which were sold for cash

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Game ID thefts surpass one million

Company accused of taking no action to halt huge illegal registration

Simon Burns in Taipei, vnunet.com 16 Mar 2006

The number of victims in the world's largest identity theft case could surpass one million, authorities in South Korea have reported.

Police announced this week that the number of victims of ID theft connected to the online game Lineage is between 980,000 and 1.22 million, according to the Korea Herald.

The game's developer, NCsoft, said that, as of Sunday, it has received confirmation from over 175,000 people in South Korea that their national identity numbers have been used without their knowledge to register accounts in its Lineage series of multiplayer online role-playing games.

As previously reported on vnunet.com, the bogus accounts were apparently used by China-based groups to generate virtual items in the game world which were then sold to gamers in exchange for real world cash.

Police now report that they have traced email addresses to China. Approximately 1,500 different IP addresses were used to connect to the illegal accounts.

New account registrations which provided a free trial period of several days could previously be obtained simply by entering an ID number into an online form. NCsoft said that it has since tightened up its registration procedures.

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