Is WoW renting safe and legal?

You received an offer to rent your World of Warcraft account and in short period of time you’ll get it back and be richer for certain amount. Sounds alluring, right? But, is this service actually safe and legal?

Basically it means that you give your account, or to be precise, you rent account to some person or service that will basically use it as a tool for farming and in the same time bring you some profit in real money, in game items or by powerleveling your account.

What impels renting services is certainly not doing good things to save the humanity and help thousands of poor WoW players. Reason is simple. As they promise that they will bring some profit to the original owner of the account, they will earn few times more.

Farming phenomenon, old as same as MMORPG games, was a fertile ground for the evolution of this ‘lucrative job’

Hundreds or even thousands of players saw their opportunity to become rich by collecting gold and in-game items, first for their own accounts and later they discovered that they can do the same with other accounts as well.
Idea of ideal way for farming has been born. But, then dilemma on how to get other accounts has risen.

Solution was simple. Anyone who ever heard about renting a car, boat or any other kind of object or service, must had a bulb above the head.
Simple, yet very practical idea has been conceived.

Farmers who work in-game are using rented accounts still owned by WoW players as the farming tools. The accounts still belong to the original owners and they can reclaim them at any time they wish. But for every day that farmer uses the account, original owner is richer for amount that has been agreed in advance. At the end of the week or a month or upon returning of account, player who owns account gets certain amount calculated on number of days that account has been rented.
Farmers usually rent accounts for a specified amount of time. It could be a day, a week or a month. Players have the option of being paid in money via Paypal (or other money transferring services), in-game gold or leveling.

But, question is, how safe this process is to accounts and to original owners. And is it legal of course?
There is certain number of risks present and here are the some of them:

First of all, account goes in hands of complete strangers. Who can guarantee that they will return it upon agreed term?
Of course, original owners have an option of recovery that can return accounts to them. But, if they manage to return their accounts, who can guarantee that they will receive agreed amount.
Also, recovered or returned accounts can still be ripped off for in-game items that have been collected through the months and even years of playing.

Last, but certainly not the smallest threat, which is in the same time answer on question “Is renting legal?” is fact that Blizzard can still ban your account if they discovered that it has been object of renting.
How they can find out? Simply, by checking IP address. IP will be different and it will be suspicious if original owner, who resides in USA, suddenly plays from China.

This is the FAQ section of one of the WoW renting companies (with original spelling).

1.What's the rate of getting my account banned?
We use real players (WOW Power Leveler) to level or get on your character, ALL HAND MADE, NO BOTS , NO MACROS .Your account will be safe and secure, GUARANTEED.

2.What if the account really get banned?
We will buy you a new lvl 70 account, or make a compensation about 100—200$.

3.Can I earn more through rental then sale?
Of course you can. Some one even rent their accounts to us for half a year. What they got is larger than sell.

4.Is my account info. Safe? Is there any guarantee that i won't have my account stolen?
We understand that you may be nervous about letting us access your game account while leveling your character. Game account theft is a very real problem, thus we take the security of our customers' game accounts very seriously.we nerver change our customers’ password without their permission. Besides if you are the Original Owner of the account, you can also recall your pw back by SQ/A.

5.Can I rent lvl 70 account without gamecard to you?
We can buy gamecard for you, but you should let us play for at 3 days, then we can rent in if you like.

6.When can I get the payment?
We will pay you through paypal, the payment will arrive to your paypal account after you rented your account for about 24 hous.

7.Can I rent my account to you for a long time?
Of course, you are welcome to do that. Also you can cancel the rental service at any time.

8.How can I trust you?
Our paypal are EBay verified. In addition to the fact that we as a new company would like to stay in business for more than a few weeks, you should take comfort because we only need your account name and password and the server.

However, if you think I’m talking nonsense, then give renting a try. I’m sure you could make a bunch of money.

The worst thing that can happen to you is losing your account.