Pet Society Facebook App Thief Steals Everything But Cat

by hearit

In a game of “everything-but-the-cat burglar”, a Facebook user’s had her virtual house virtually stripped. Paola Letizia of Palermo, Italy, tells police that a computer hacker has stripped her virtual home of virtually everything—everything, that is, but the blue cat.

The "Pet Society" Facebook app, a social pet simulation game from game maker “Playfish”, allows players to virtually decorate homes and even lets players invest in stylish virtual clothes for virtual pets.

Apparently, just like real life, virtual-world burglars aren’t so concerned with virtual pets.

The Facebook thief got away with it all—the Italian woman’s “Pet Society” virtual digs robbed of all virtual furniture, virtual clothes and virtual paintings in her online seven-room “residence”. The blue cat got left behind.

A computer hacker cracked the woman’s Facebook password. Italy's "postal police" are investigating the “Pet Society” app theft as a crime of “aggravated entry”—if and when police every possibly trace down a hacker, the crime includes a max of five years’ time in a very real, one-room “home”: prison.

The stolen “Pet Society” app virtual goods cost the woman some not-so-virtual cash: the Facebook user’s out about $140 cash for those upgrades.

"I don’t think it matters that the flat only exists in Facebook," Letizia told Italian newspapers. "It is real to me and I have suffered a real loss."

Money, understandable—the “real loss” part, rather distressing.

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