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Using his own savings and his mother's credit card a 12 year-old boy has thrown away £900 ($1368) buying virtual coins on the Facebook based farm simulation 'FarmVille'.

FarmVille allows members to manage a virtual farm by planting, growing and harvesting crops, trees and livestock. New users are given virtual coins to establish their farm, and the revenue from their crops can be used to maintain it. Many choose to hasten their progress by purchasing extra virtual coins using real cash.

The boy's mother does not blame Facebook or Zynga but has spoken out against a lack of controls on the social network that could prevent something like this from happening:

"I do think they need to shoulder some responsibility in this business and put systems in place to stop this happening again. The fact that he was using a card in a different name should bring up some sort of security and the online secure payment filter seems to be bypassed for Facebook payments."

Since FarmVille is one of Facebook's most popular integrated games it is highly unlikely that this incident will lead to in any changes to the site unless it is frequently repeated.

FarmVille is estimated to have more than 80 million players worldwide, including 30 million who tend to their farm every day - in this blogger's opinion that's 80 million people who could be wasting their time (and money) playing a decent video game instead.


Source: Guardian