A YouTuber Had Their Account Making Unauthorized Purchase… By A Pet Fish
A YouTuber Had Their Account Making Unauthorized Purchase… By A Pet Fish
…of all things.
Betta fish. Image: Wikipedia / Daniella Vereeken
Before you scratch your head and ask “what…?” – first, yes: A pet fish managed to compromise its owner’s credit card number, changed account name, and sent emails. At this point I wouldn’t blame you if you have even more questions.
To explain how this happened: the pet fish (Betta Fish) is wired to a motion sensor which translates its movements to corresponding inputs in-game towards the owner’s Nintendo Switch. In a livestream in January, as the Switch was running Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, the owner apparently walked away while unaware that the game has crashed and thus returned back to Switch’s home screen.
…and this is where chaos ensued. The fish starting swimming around which sent a bunch of random inputs, changing the owner’s name from Mutekimaru to “ROWAWAWAWA¥”, launched the online store, exposing the credit card number of its owner, set up PayPal account, sent an email, “authorized” a ¥500 payment and downloaded Nintendo 64 for Switch.
The owner was rather amazed by the fact that the pet fish “reads” the Terms and Conditions. “Many of us humans don’t read the terms of service. But fish are smarter than we are. Unbelievable,” they continued. “Have you ever received an email from your pet fish? …is he a professional?”
Remember that ¥500 purchase the fish paid? The owner seeks Nintendo for help to reinstate that transaction. “I am very sorry, but is it possible to get a refund for items purchased in error by my pet fish?” It was not known if Nintendo ever refund what is effectively $4 (RM16.43 at this writing), but we sure had a laugh off of this one.
Pokdepinion: You seriously can’t make this up, LOL
