You are here: Finnish police are investigating the theft of virtual property in the popular teen hangout, Habbo Hotel. According to a news report published on breitbart.com, significant amounts of virtual property were stolen from some 400 users of the virtual world using "hoax web sites" to trick users into divulging their usernames and passwords.
Armed with that information, the thieves went through the user accounts and stole virtual property. What property was stolen was not disclosed in the report. Doesn't Habbo Hotel warn against this sort of thing like every other virtual world on the planet?
Police have allegedly searched several homes in five Finnish cities, confiscated computer equipment and brought several people in for questioning. The quantity, types and value of the property are not known at this time.
But regardless of the amount, the important thing is that the police are treating habbohotel coins as theft. Virtual items exist in limbo right now while society tries to figure out what to do with them. On the one hand they don't really exist and to outsiders their theft can be harder than care about than a gold watch for instance. But any gamer who plays online games can tell you that all virtual items have some sort of time or money (or both) equivalency attached to them. So for people like us it is theft, same as if someone were to walk off with our wallet.
Cases like these are important because they help solidify the fact that even items in cyber space can be linked back to physical assets (usually time and/or habbo credits). And as a deterent to theives because the police can and will do something about it.
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