Roblox is one of the world's most popular games with an estimated 230 million players--most of them kids. And Roblox is also pretty danged awful. If it's not 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:exploiting young developers for practically free labor (and taking a 70 percent cut of all their profits) it's 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:failing to protect childre𓃲ܫn from child abuse, according to two previous reports from Peo🤡ple Make Games.
Now a new investigative report from journalist Luke Winkie (via ) has found a "thriving underworld" of scammers, hackers, and thieves in Roblox, including various Discord communities, subreddits, and forums hosting teenage hackers that are making ⛎bank off the naivete of fellow Roblox players.
It all stems from Roblox's robust market, where players can purchase cosmetic items that range in price from a few dollars to a few thousand. And when the real-world value of digital items reaches the thousands, it's incentivizing players to grab that green through any means necessary.
One scheme described by interviewing a pair of thieving 13-year-olds is basically a phishing scam. They would scope out players with high-value items in-game or on Roblox's various Discord servers and then attempt to get personal information from that player in order to take over their account. Once given access, the scammers then empty that player’s wallets and sell all their items on third-party sites like RBX Flip, a Roblox "casino" where players gamble items. These online gambling sites essentially launder the stolen goods, acting as fences and making it harder for Roblox to track them down.
Another 13-year-old hacker uses a more high-tech approach. A custom "pin cracker" script can hack into a player's account, acquiring username, password, and IP address and auto-unverifying their email so they often have no idea their account has been hacked and have no means of retrieving it. That player noted being able to make as much as $6,000 in a single heist.
Roblox told IGN in a statement that it uses two-factor authen⛄tication for all users and offers educational materials for players to avoid scams, as well as "aggressively deter" players from moving transactions to third-party sites. However, it is telling that Roblox has made few, if any, moves against third-party cosmetic gambling or trading sites.