I came across this interesting news on CNN where a woman in Japan was arrested for killing her virtual husband. She had happily married virtually to a man from Japan on popular interactive game “Maple Story” and suddenly the man decided to divorce her. This made her mad and she decided to take revenge on him in real life by logging in as her virtual husband and committed virtual suicide. Man..that hurtsss.

If according to CNN, she got the log-in details “from the 33-year-old office worker when their characters were happily married”.   So if the man gave her the log-in details voluntarily, does using them later for devious purposes still constitute hacking?    All she did was simply log in with what he gave her.   To my mind, hacking involves breaking into the account by brute force when you don’t readily have the account details to hand. Who is the culprit in this case? The man who foolishly handed over his login details to her or the woman who used the login details handed over to her to her benifit?

Another case recorded says that police arrested a 16-year-old boy on charges of swindling virtual currency worth $360,000 in an interactive role playing game by manipulating another player’s portfolio using a stolen ID and password.

Phew!!! We are slowly moving away from reality to virtual world. I hope a time will not come when we will have virtual parents, virtual wife, virtual sex and virtual children.

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