Hang on to your World of Warcraft wallet, with Deakin U’s Nick Patterson estimating criminals spirit away $50bn (in real money, not elvish gold) worth of property in on-line games. According to Dr Patterson, cyber crims, “stalk people in the virtual world and take note of what they are wearing, what they are using for weaponry, what car they are driving in, and then they find out their user ID and force their way into their account or hack their system.”

In a new journal  journal article he recommends four steps to keep in-game goodies. But $50bn? Who knows?  –  apparently, World of Warcraft currencies are worth more than the Venezuelan Bolivar.