WARNING: A Newly Revised Scam Targeting Runescape Gamers

This law was created in 1932, and covers all goods, wares, articles, and merchandise mined or manufactured in any foreign country by convict, indentured, or forced labor. If you are curious this is one of the laws that tech companies are accused of violating when it is determined that the garment factories that they contract with (and in some cases actually OWN) are staffed by under-age forced labor or worse, uncompensated convict labor.

According to the law set out in 19 U.S. Code § 1307 no such products may be permitted to enter the United States at any port of entry, and additionally the statute criminalizes the act of importing goods covered by this law.

(7) Body of the Message Part 3 -- The failure to use a more correct law.

The reason that these scam messages do not include the correct law with respect to RWT, or violating their Terms of Service or EULA (End-User License Agreement) is simply down to the fact that there are no federal (or state laws really) that cover such violations!

In fact the typical ToS / EULA is far more restrictive than any law real or imagined could ever be, and often are so restrictive that they violate OTHER federal laws! For instance among the more common law violations found in Terms of Service and EULAs are 17 U.S.C. §§ 1201 AKA DMCA, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510–2522 AKA ECPA, 16 CFR Part 312 AKA COPPA, and recently many legal rights organizations suspect that the game companies may be flagrantly violating 5 U.S.C. § 552a AKA TPCO-1974 by cooperating with government requests for customer data and information absent proper court orders.

(8) Body of the Message Part 4 -- the Link and its Scam Payload.

A link is included in the paragraph that begins with “Please complete this identity check. . .” that indicates by fully printing the “link” that it will take you to a page at the URL “http://www.runescape.com” but closer examination of the spoofed text reveals that it will actually take you to AND log you IN to a page at the URL http://www-runescape.com form.ws/blah/m=weblogin/g=runescape/blah that will result in running an app that will cause you to compromise your computer and its security and wow that would really suck, right?

(9) Body of the Message Part 5 -- the catch-all coup de grâce.

Finally to help move the mind of the potential victim into the best constructive emotional posture to help the scam succeed, since they are not actually guilty of the “charges” being lodged against them, the clever little crackers behind the scam added the following paragraph to the bottom of he message pretty much to encourage the outraged customer to click the purloined link above and download the Trojan payload, effectively compromising their computer:

“Please note: Because of some technical problems with our detection systems, some accounts were incorrectly punished. Most of the invalid infractions should have been removed. Please visit the appeal section to challenge any unjustified infractions received due to system errors.”

The emphasis (italics) of the paragraph our ours -- we want to really forcefully demonstrate this paragraph and point out that it is utterly brilliant and probably the main cause for this scam being a success.

The confronted customer, having been told that the security servers at RuneScape have absolutely and positively ID'd YOU and YOUR accounts in violation of the ToS, the EULA, the Official Secrets Act, the Virginity Pledge you signed in the fourth grade, and dozens - no - hundreds of other laws, pledges, oaths, and commitments, is certainly and justifiably outraged at these unfounded untrue allegations...

Well, maybe you did participate in the riots on Falador on World 66, but that was OK because you know, everyone was doing it, and besides it's not like YOU were doing you know, RWT... Riot, sure, trading real-world money for gold or items?! No way!

The End Results

It really does not matter whether you did participate in RWT, or you are one of the players who signed the anti-RWT petition at Whitehouse.gov -- heck it does not even matter that you really did take part in the riots on World 66! Why? Because this is not about RWT, or riots. It is about a bunch of crackers and criminals who have targeted YOU.

They want to compromise YOUR computer. They very much would like to gain access to your online banking account, your game account, and anything else account-wise that they can use to make money, which really if you put it in the simplest of terms, means steal YOUR money.

And there you have it.