Man Tracked Down and Arrested Via WoW

kabome writes with this excerpt from a story about an alleged drug dealer who was located by law enforcement thanks to World of Warcraft: "Roberson’s subpoena was nothing more than a politely worded request, considering the limits of his law enforcement jurisdiction and the ambiguity of the online world. 'They don’t have to respond to us, and I was under the assumption that they wouldn’t,' said Roberson. ... Blizzard did more than cooperate. It gave Roberson everything he needed to track down Hightower, including his IP address, his account information and history, his billing address, and even his online screen name and preferred server. From there it was a simple matter to zero in on the suspect's location."

Re:Impropriety

[MichaelSmith]

(wakes up, looks around)

Is it 2010 now?

Armory Link

[doomy]

He is pretty bad at wow too.

Look at his Armory.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bladefist&n=Rastlynn

I'm sure he's a perfect angel

[Myrcutio]

Yea, because the county is going to spend hundreds of manhours extraditing a prisoner from Canada without enough evidence to convict. It's a done deal, call it for what it is.

Re:strange

[Anonymous Coward]

He probably used this.

http://bobsworthindustries.com/csi/enhance.html?image1=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.maptown.com%2Fimages%2Fntscanadafull.jpg&image2=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.delawareonline.com%2Fblogs%2Fstrange-brew.jpg&x=48&y=80 [bobsworthindustries.com]
  miles away from my current location.

Yeah, an ip address search only gives you the location of the nearest "box". Mine puts me 27 miles away in a pretty affluent part of town, while I live in the shitty part. The way they find people through an ip address is to look up billing info at the isp. But that's boring man! that won't sell newspapers!

I'm pretty sure it's just the reporter trying to spice the story up for the type of 'tards that actually do watch CSI.

Tracking

[andrewbwn]

Sir, I think we've located him, he's in Orgrimmar. Wait.... he just teleported in Thunder Bluff, he must be a mage, and he's talking to Cairne Bloodhoof. APB: Be on the look out for a level 65 undead mage wanted for selling Vision Dust and Dream Dust in the Orgrimmar Auction House. Be advised he's speced in Frost. Sir, I think we should send our undercover Troll Hunter with Humanoid Tracking to catch him.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

I see, your comment is a post modern take on what it means to post a comment on slashdot. It's flying in the face of the establishment and saying "We don't want to reply, we just want to say things, relevant, or not".

Right on man.

*click* *click* *click* *click*

Mass exodus

[Kenoli]

This decision is just going to lead the game straight to ruin.
I imagine the total number of accounts that will be closed as a result of this incident will be somewhere around, well, one.
Assuming the guy goes to jail

And assuming they don't have WoW in jail.