Taking serious action to fight against internet crime
"Internet crime rates are higher than ever"; "Thousands of stolen identities"; "Year 2008 is the
year of internet fraud". These are just a couple of examples about the headlines you may see in the
news almost daily. Unfortunately this time these headlines are correct.
One of our main goals for us as a social media / online entertainment company is to keep the
user environments in
Habbo and
IRC-Galleria as safe as possible, and yes
also to fight against internet crime. In this sector we have tightened our procedures and now we
are taking some serious action to prevent these illegalities from happening.
We are of course not alone with this issue - we work closely with law enforcement to solve
cases and also to educate people. As an example of recent activities, we did an extensive search
with the help of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation to find a person
in the USA who had been harassing our Habbo service and its customers for a long time.
After several failed attempts to stop this person ourselves, we decided to involve the
authorities. The FBI’s official investigations started in February 2008. During the summer this
year the FBI had done a search in the suspect’s residence and they had found possible references to
other illegal activities as well. These may result in more serious charges against this person.
The safety of our users is a top priority for us and we pay serious attention to all attempts
to perform malicious activity regarding our products and the communities around them. Our skilled
security staff investigates all cases and some of them are also reported to authorities when
applicable. We are also working actively in cooperation with other industry players and different
organizations when it comes to the security and safety of the internet.