Online services, including multiplayer games, often warn users against sharing account information with strangers, and one young boy from California has learned that lesson the hard way.

11-year-old Henry Kramer frequently streamed sessions of the popular PlayStation 4 game Destiny, a first-person shooter known for its grindy levelling system and rare item drops that some players strive for weeks to obtain.

During a recent stream, Henry gave control of his game over to PSN user KirmitTHEfrog using SharePlay, a method of passing control to another user just as if you had handed someone your controller. Henry believed that he could trust the other player, who had been an online friend of someone Henry knew in real life.

But shortly after passing over control of his game, the other user quickly began deleting Henry’s high level characters, one of which was nearly at the game’s current level cap. Henry immediately cut the power to his console as soon as he realized what was happening, but it was too late.

“He was devastated”

Two of Henry’s three high level characters had been deleted forever. In the recording of the stream, Henry can be heard crying over the loss of the characters he had been playing for months.

“As you can see in the video, he was devastated,” Henry’s mother, Courtney Kramer, told Eurogamer. “As Henry’s parents, we are constantly reminding him to be careful, to never share your personal information, to always be on the lookout. But the truth is, no matter how many times a parent says this to a kid, when you’re in the actual situation, it’s easier to trust people you think are your friends because someone you actually know in real life vouches for them.”

Bungie, the developer of Destiny, has stated that returning Henry’s deleted characters would violate their policies on such incidents, so it seems unlikely that he will see them again.

Henry’s mother noted that since the incident became public, other players in the Destiny community have turned out to help him level new characters quickly, which has “really made a difference” to him.

Screenshot via Courtney Smith Kramer/YouTube