If it sounds too good to be true…
Wednesday, January 17th, 2007 at 1:32 PM by: Zee LindenHave you ever gotten an email from someone in a small nation on another continent asking for help in transferring a large amount of money to the US for which you’ll be richly rewarded? What do you do? The answer is simple - you ignore it.
The same thing is true in the virtual world. Getting caught out by a scam, or duped by another resident is upsetting enough, but you should also understand that if you don’t ignore them and become involved we may close your account temporarily while we investigate.
To avoid fraud, there are two situations that all residents and groups should be wary of:
1. Buying Linden Dollars from an unknown seller
2. Accepting large Linden Dollar gifts from an unknown donor (hundreds of thousands of L$)
Both of these situations are happening more and more as we recently implemented the Risk API. The Risk API uses a complicated algorithm to identify accounts with suspicious activity and prevent them from trading Lindens or cashing out. Use of the Risk API helps us and other exchanges identify fraud before it happens.
Because of the Risk API, fraudsters are having a much more difficult time cashing out. Instead, they have turned to a new form of social griefing. They join a group & then make large Linden Dollar gifts. If you accept the gift it’s going to look like fraudulent activity and we may temporarily close your account while we investigate. If a resident wants to donate to your group, please ask them to do it in US dollars rather than Linden Dollars. That may be the only way to avoid being defrauded.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:37 PM
Ok this doesn’t quite make sense to me. Also, I hope that this won’t affect in game partners as we switch money back and forth all the time. As is done in any business. RL or SL.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:38 PM
Pardon me if this seems like a stupid question, but how *can* you stop people paying you large linden blocks if they choose to? As far as i know its just part of your profile. It doesn’t ask you to accept the payment, or any validation on it, it just moves the L$, unless this has changed recently?
January 17th, 2007 at 1:38 PM
ok, where’s the link?
January 17th, 2007 at 1:39 PM
Maybe ‘Z’ will update the original post with the actual link, but in the meantime, I this this is what they were referring to:
http://secondlife.com/developers/api/risk.php
January 17th, 2007 at 1:39 PM
Who addreses him/herself as Z ? Im not familiair with that name
January 17th, 2007 at 1:40 PM
it sounds like ppl are trying to avoid getting taxed for exchanges and in the process selling lindens for a better price the ll is this what is you guys are trying to stop?
January 17th, 2007 at 1:40 PM
Zorro!
But seriously, the reason the risk API works at stopping fraud, is because it flags all kinds of transactions
January 17th, 2007 at 1:41 PM
I guess what they’re saying is that if you receive a large gift and it seems fishy, you should send a help request and ask LL to investigate where it came from.
Because yes, there’s no way to deny someone the right to give you money, you have to manually pay them back after the fact.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:43 PM
Good to know….. but for those not well informed about fraud-techniques, how can receiving large L$-value gifts be fraudulent ? If Bill Gates makes a billion-donation on medical research, it’s not fraud… if someone in SL gives a group a highly valuable gift, where is the fraud ? My question might sound naive to educated economists and lawyers but to the average you-and-me your article is not clear. I guess it has to do with money-washing stuff, but that’s so very vague to me. Since we have time to spend on this right now, can anyone enlighten this a bit ? Thanx in advance and see y’all as soon as the grid opens again.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:44 PM
why pay them back at all? a gift is a gift, no return required… or am i missing something?
January 17th, 2007 at 1:44 PM
No, they are trying to stop FRAUD. As in somebody hacking your account, stealing your CC, PayPal account etc…
3rd Party Websites have to use it, or else they are responsible for the money stolen plus more.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:45 PM
Exactly how do the fraudsters benefit from making large payments to a group and having the persons account be put on hold? Isn’t that like robbing a bank and throwing bricks of cash at passers by to give them inconvenient concussions?
January 17th, 2007 at 1:45 PM
Two questions:
First, Eltee Statosky’s question about whether it is possible to refuse a gift of Lindens from another person. As far as I know you don’t have that option.
Second, I am unclear what the fraud is that Linden Labs is seeking to prevent. Is it getting around the maximum restrictions on dollar-linden transactions within a certain time period?
January 17th, 2007 at 1:45 PM
How ‘large’ is a ‘large’ gift of Linden dollars, then?
January 17th, 2007 at 1:47 PM
well you should always be careful on anything on th computer. i mean these people are across the world can you really trust them?
i know you can some but . how do you know which ones are genuine!
January 17th, 2007 at 1:47 PM
this sounds a lot like “you know who you are, and we do too so watch it”
January 17th, 2007 at 1:48 PM
Anna, there is no way to know if the person has stolen that money, and that’s why they are giving it away. They freeze the peoples accounts while the make sure it is legit.
Imagine this:
Your at a club, a random guy comes and put’s L$1,000,000 into a sploder there, of course everybody joines up. Everybody who won anything from that, gets there account banned for being involved in “fradulent activity”. I think they just need to be carefull not to get too carried away.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:48 PM
What are the boundaries, when is it a too large amount, i would like to know up front, before hitting into trouble zone
January 17th, 2007 at 1:48 PM
Just wondering how this affects those of us who run legitimate businesses in Second Life. In SL we exchange goods or services for Lindens with prices set by the markets. Are you saying that if the exchange is too high you are going to stop it?
January 17th, 2007 at 1:49 PM
Everytime I’ve been given something in world a little light blue window pops down & asks me if I accept it. Say yes I get it. Say no I don’t. So there is no way to prevent someone trying to give you $L or an object. You don’t have to take it.
But, if yu can live without your account for a few days, and don’t do something silly like give the money back (after all in most US states you don’t have to give back things you get in the mail unasked for. It’s a gift.) So anyone wanting to give me large donations of $L go ahead. But, giver be warned. You won’t get it back. :/
January 17th, 2007 at 1:50 PM
ok…………………..one thing to say,let us backon the grid.im finding it very boring having to wait untill unnessisary updates aredone.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:50 PM
I believe Z better speak up on who they really are and do it right now. Im not gonna take this seriously until a linden reposts it.
And could you explain what a large L$ gift would be?
January 17th, 2007 at 1:51 PM
thats what i meant. you can trust everyone. you need to be careful on this or actually in ab\nything in life. and whats with the- this sounds a lot like “you know who you are, and we do too so watch it-
i dont get that…lol i was agreeing that you shouldn’t except the money.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:52 PM
Here’s another PRIME example of how shallow the delivery can be in the blog arena…
The analogy is lame…the delivery is weak…and the explanation is vague…
But hey! It certainly gives all those waiting for the grid to come back something to BS about…
Great way to punt one off Z!
January 17th, 2007 at 1:52 PM
Z-
Here is a hypothetical that needs to be addressed.
Lets say I go to a slingo game.. or a tringo game and another resident chooses to donate L$50,000 into the pot. I win the game not knowing that it was aquired in a fradulent manner. Is MY account going to get suspended simply because I won a game???
Please advise
January 17th, 2007 at 1:52 PM
Lydia is suspect number one.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:53 PM
wouldnt haveing a confirmation work better for direct payments before someone accepts lindens that are in a big ammount?
January 17th, 2007 at 1:54 PM
ya know, i learned a few things after a close friend’s group of sims suffered a good bit due to fraud.
i have since made the decision to have large donations sent to me and my group in USD via other electronic means. when we need money for sim upkeep, we simply transfer the USD to the account that’s supporting our investment, or we buy Linden Dollars from LL when we need to make a group purchase.
believe me, after seeing what happened to my friends, we’re very wary of donations. plus, asking a donator send USD through an avenue besides LL is a test of their intentions.
and no, i’m in no way downing LL or their economics system.so don’t even think that.
with the increasing number of malicious accounts and players, we hafta be careful.
IF anyone randomly sends me any large number of L, believe me when i say i will personally call LL and have them investigate the transaction.
jus’ random thoughts from a thylacine.
Howlz,
Lacy
January 17th, 2007 at 1:54 PM
There is no way to deny someone giving you money. How in the world does this even apply to users other than saying “hey guess what your screwed if you get a lot of money, thanks have a nice ban!”
January 17th, 2007 at 1:54 PM
attempting to divert attention from the fact secondlife is not built by competent engineers is a nice move but fails. people stupid enough to be taken for a ride are going to be taken for a ride no matter how many times a warning is posted in a location said fools will never look.
hmmmm… makes me wonder about all those who have invested heavily in secondlife.
Why not hire competent resources that can actually write professional code and augment them with a professional SQA and SCM staff instead of posting skeery stories while your service remains unusable as it has been for over a month now?
January 17th, 2007 at 1:54 PM
I’m sure the anti fraud doohicky is a little more complex and follows the tree of exchanges that take place. Online and in RL there are people who launder money regularly i’m sure, i read about it once i think. :D. But in any even someone may have a large amount of money they have gotten either through manipulation, or a bug, or some form of event that they know is a not so legal form of exchange via the Sl terms. And then try and offload it to various people. Then those people could pass it on to another and down a long line be placed back into a fraudulent users account and thus cashed out. So I would assume the way that the anti fraud system would just track large amounts and follow the patern to its final destination. And would then assume that they check the profiles that the money passes through to make sure they aren’t coming from the same computer. When anyone logs in to a game online it generally scans your configuration. This gives many statistics to your specific computer imformation. I think the reason it hasn’t been thuroughly explained is because in order to fully get a grip of what takes place they’d have to tell everyone how people embezzle or launder money which isn’t in LLs best interest. I myself although I dislike some of the things that take place, feel this is a great way of pursuing fradulent transactions and investigating the source of money scams. I’m sure if you were to recieve a large gift, and your account was disabled it would be reactivated as soon as they could discover your not a threat. And if your innocent there shouldn’t be any cause for alarm but a thanks for trying to protect the economy that a lot of us are here for. So on this *one* thanks for the extra protection LL. and sorry for all the *assumptions*
January 17th, 2007 at 1:55 PM
I was never able to stop payments. So people are gonna start doing it to temporarily take out people’s accounts. And i still see no linden.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:55 PM
Last sunday i lost 3500 of my balance, just like that, could it be this was a preview of whats coming next ? Was it that someone paid me money that you had flagged as fraude money ? When is something concidered a gift, i see in the history you go between PAID and BOUGHT, is it on both transactiontypes you scan and act?
So many question out of this post.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:56 PM
To be honest this post looks suspicious…..posted by Z? Z who? Z Linden? lol Is someone making their own lindens or something? I too am confused by this post.
I’ve noticed the blog threads seem to stop letting you post after about 500 comments. It’s kind of disappointing but can be expected by the way people carry on when things go haywire.
I would just like to point out something about the “skinny/tight pants” everyone is complaining about. I have found a way to fix this quickly…for myself at least and I’d like to share this information. When I see that my pants have gone tighty on me, I go into View > Camera Controls. The blue box with the arrows allows you to pan around up down left right with the camera. For me, if I hold the left or right arrow and pan around for a few seconds….poof…. my pants go back to normal. Hope this is a legitimate work around.
=[' '.]=
January 17th, 2007 at 1:57 PM
Who is “Z”? Is it a hacker?
January 17th, 2007 at 1:57 PM
There is something vague and mysterious about all this.
What EXACTLY is the problem?
January 17th, 2007 at 1:57 PM
Can someone lend me 50l for hot wings and peelers?
January 17th, 2007 at 1:57 PM
OK, let me understand… someone want to give me a large chunk of $L, because Im a nice guy… and Im supposed to say “No Thanks?”. I guess im not understanding how the fraud part works… but if he/she gives me money, how am I being defrauded or harmed?
January 17th, 2007 at 1:57 PM
Stop getting all worked up over this until a linden says something on it.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:57 PM
reading it again, im wondering if when LL seize your L$ in error, do you get it back?
January 17th, 2007 at 1:58 PM
Uh…
My friend gave me L$10K for Christmas so I could buy whatever I wanted. I don’t think he’d have bothered if he had to mess about sending me real money. I’m just glad he did it last year then, as what you seem to be saying is that I could have my account temporarily suspended just because a kind friend gives me money
That really sucks, you know? Get a grip. 99.9% of large transactions are nothing to do with fraud. You are being way over paranoid and just clamping down on yet another feature of free interaction. I’m amazed that you let people in without identification so they can run amok on the grid if they so choose (no I’m NOT saying all unverifieds do this…) but you will penalise those of us who happen to feel generous towards our fellow citizens.
Just what I needed to hear right now >.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:58 PM
ok still dont understand is it illegal to say set up a bank and sell your lindens for US$? i have thought about that because when i sell i only get 67 cents US for 189$L and yet ppl buy them at 189$L for 1US$ now thats a scam!!!!!!
January 17th, 2007 at 1:59 PM
If some random person comes up and gives me like 30,000L$ does it like go through the internet, finds my bank account and steals all the money i have? Tell us “Z”.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:59 PM
My understanding of this is certain citezens may have been passing around lindens aquired fraudulently,Its highly unlikely this money would be passed to another citexen most likely to that persons geniune account,by saying this what they are saying is if they believe this to be the case that account may also be frozen while the transaction trail is followed up.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:59 PM
its not fair to b1an people or give them crap for this. some people suck. always someone in the world ready to wreck it for the rest of us. no there is no way to stop someone from paying you direct? so what the heck do we do?
January 17th, 2007 at 1:59 PM
The problem is you “can’t not accept it”. If someone chooses to pay you L$1,000,000 - you simply get paid. You have no choice in the matter.
So, essentially, if someone manages to generate or otherwise acquire this many lindens, they can “hit” anyone they like. If it goes to your account, you’re going to be investigated, and perhaps more.
Let’s say an ill-intentioned person wants to “take out” 7 people. They manage to somehow generate or otherwise acquire L$7,000,000 falsely or fraudulently.
This person, perhaps even an anon account, just goes and “pays” these 7 individuals that they want to ‘target’ L$1,000,000 each, triggering each account for investigation/suspension under the “Risk API”. The seven “targets” never got the chance to even deny the transaction. Some may not even have been online.
I will say this: If I ever received that large of an amount of L$, i’d send it right back to the sender right away. But I highly doubt this would “reverse” the “Risk API” trigger — It’d probably even make it look -more- suspicious.
So LL, I have to ask: WHAT can we do to defend against getting involved in things like this? It seems at this point there really is nothing we can do. I’d certainly not keep the money, not under any circumstances. But as it stands, we cannot -deny- or “not accept” large gifts or transactions.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:00 PM
Inquiring about pretty much the same thing Geddy said in post 25. I don’t want the hassle of my account being suspended and investigated just because someone gave me some cash, or I participated in a large pot of some kind.
What gives with this? Can we get some more direct information here please?
January 17th, 2007 at 2:00 PM
opps speaking typonesse again:(
January 17th, 2007 at 2:00 PM
I think this is just a random post so this “z” guy can laugh at everyone.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:02 PM
or this is just a time sink while we wait for the grid to come back up…
January 17th, 2007 at 2:02 PM
Hmmm, i suppose it makes sense.
Although the idea of reciving a large Linden dollar gift seems *really* good
If you didnt investigate, you would get hassle for not, so it’s the right direction to go by doing this.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:02 PM
This may be off-topic, but here is a tip that will help you read all the posts that are on-topic.
To anyone complaining or irritated about the small type on the new blog:
If you are on Windows (don’t know about the MAC) and using MS Internet Explorer for your web browser then UPGRADE to version 7.0.
It has this great feature that allows you to magnify the browser window. I have vision problems and this has been a godsend. I can now finally read any web page without putting on my reading glasses and getting 2″ from the monitor.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:03 PM
Jesse Murdoch (Bad Girls), you and your money drops are now exposed for the evil they are!
LMAO
So much for nice people helping new residents and winning the love and support of the customers.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:03 PM
i lost 700l$ to a stupid update. this stinks
January 17th, 2007 at 2:03 PM
@Craig Tanner: LL is trying to prevent fraud that would affect their Supply Linden revenues.
Picture this: Alice places an invisible prim over a Bob’s “Pay” object and gets L$1,000,000 illegitimate L$. Alice then gives the L$ to Charlie as a gift, or buys land from him, etc. and is eventually banned. At some point Bob complains to LL that his sales have been intercepted and demands recompensation.
Now, by all rights, LL *shouldn’t* take the L$ back from Charlie, as he hasn’t done anything wrong. However, if Bob complains loudly enough and they give him back the L$ that have been stolen, then the economy has an extra L$1,000,000 floating around. Creating the extra L$ doesn’t cost LL anything directly, mind you, but could in principle affect Supply Linden’s profit from the sales of new L$.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:03 PM
ninjafoo what the heck did you mean….this sounds a lot like “you know who you are, and we do too so watch it…..lol
January 17th, 2007 at 2:03 PM
Oh. Zee linden. So they are serious. Well thanks for telling griefs how to nuke accounts.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:03 PM
I am not sure what the limit is for “large donations”, but continually pass, sometimes HALF of my lindens to my boyfriend. that could be over 50k if I have a good day. Does that mean I am in violation? This is way vague and I think there needs to be more indepth descriptions.
And in all honesty, i don’t know anyone who would refuse if someone sent them 50K or more Lindens. I mean after all…gotta support those shopping habits…
January 17th, 2007 at 2:03 PM
Ha! Talk about Sketchy…Who the heck is Z?….This is a totally random blog…What happened to the update?
*Twilight Zone Music*
January 17th, 2007 at 2:04 PM
Why does this all sound like what happened with a certain, um, nation of furries?
January 17th, 2007 at 2:04 PM
If the Lindens really wanted to stop fraud they should be doing the following:
1) Require a $5 signup fee on all new accounts either by credit card or paypal. The $5 is immediately reimbursed in lindens at the current exchange rate. So new users will be verified and will also have some money to spend in world to get started. $5 is trivial, and fraud accounts would plummet. You want to allow free accounts? Fine, put them on the beta grid, you can use the testers and they wouldn’t get into any trouble that way. When the free account folks want to get on the main grid, they can do so by upgrading to a verified account.
2) Require a pin code for all purchases. If you buy something, a prompt should appear with the L$ amount and a request for a 4 digit pin code that you assigned when you signed up for the account. It would be like having to have your ATM card AND the cards pin. Need to reset your pin code? Fine, you have to provide your account name, password, real name, and either the last four digits of your credit card or some other secure financial tidbit that a hacker would not have access to.
You want to stop fraud Linden Labs? Don’t do it by using a Risk API which only catches things after the fact. And don’t blame the whole mess on your end users. YOU GUYS are responsible for putting into place procedures that will help prevent fraud before it starts. You can’t make a fraud friendly environment and then just yell out to everyone “Be careful! It’s dangerous in here!”.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:04 PM
Ah Zee Linden…Thanks for clarifying…
January 17th, 2007 at 2:05 PM
If i get kicked off sl because someone gives me alot of L$, im not coming back. I think others should do that too if LL is gonna treat them like this.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:05 PM
RIANNEASHLEY : The post by Z is so vague, its almost like its aimed at specific people who are doing a specific thing and not something the majority of us need know anything about.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:06 PM
If you want us to use USD to transfer large sums, then give us a way to transfer them without having to wave goodbye to a portion due to PayPal fees, by allowing us to transfer USD between accounts on the website. I have already started a feature vote on it: http://secondlife.com/vote/vote.php?get_id=2074
January 17th, 2007 at 2:06 PM
I appreciate the heads up on this new issue which seemed to come out of nowhere…..and, If I get a huge random amount of money from someone I don’t know I will immediately take a screen shot of the blue pop up window, contact live help and tell the Lindens the person’s screen name. I would advise anyone else to do the same until we get more clarification on what we can do about it.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:07 PM
ah… i think you are diggin at me…lol
January 17th, 2007 at 2:08 PM
I think what Z is refering to is the people that ask you to accept a large transfer, then forward on 80% of it to antoher account. This is the classical laundering scheme used on the internet. Aparantly people are doing it with hacked SL accounts. The perpretrator will buy as many L$ as they can with the hacked account, pass it on to some knowing person, and then receive it with another hacked account. They think that this is untraceable. They are wrong and usually get caught.
The second variation is the ones that ask you to PAY them so that they can cover some sort of conversion fee, or to prove your “good intent” in passing the money on first. These never send you any money and you are SOL on getting your cash back.
Then there are the SL specific “we’re collecting for cause XXX” scams. In reality everything donated get’s passed through a couple different accounts to try to hide where the scammed donations went and is eventually cashed out into USD.
I’ve seen several posters in SL where groups have been used as a scam without their knowlege. The perpetrator pretended to be a part of the gorup collecting for a chairity and then walked away with several hundred USD. Meanwhile this unwitting group got flambayed and abused over their supposed involvement in the scam.
If you have had soemthign like this happen to you ro your group then please share your experience so that others can learn what NOT to do.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:08 PM
**** You are being way over paranoid and just clamping down on yet another feature of free interaction. ****
And you know this PRECISELY HOW? Have you ever actually seen an example of the policy being misapplied, or even applied at all? I thought not.
Some people aren’t happy unless the can find something — anything — to complain about.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:08 PM
My feeling tells me that from the next version on we will get bugged with some ” Payment acceptance” popup.
Personally i would like to see the water fixed on my land and the chat no longer mixing up lines, my hair no longer showing up in my butt and my pants fitting
January 17th, 2007 at 2:08 PM
to lilly: i have a bad shopping habit, i sometimesbuy stuff i dont even need.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:08 PM
Shire. Don’t be an elitist.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:08 PM
I just reread the original topic to see it clearly states ‘hundreds of thousands of dollars’. I can’t see that ever affecting most of our daily routines.
The problem is, requiring US dollar transactions instead of Linden dollars makes it a real world transaction instead of an in-game transaction, putting a whole new set of wheels on such a transaction.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:08 PM
Also, if someone gives me a huge chunk of linden there is gonna be a LOT of happy content creators as i go around and buy clothes, hair, shoes, textures, and goodies.
Guess i’ll have to do it on slexchange to keep it off the linden labs defective radar screen.
As for the “risk api”, i would not trust anything linden labs has come up with since they can’t accomplish software configuration management or fix any bugs. And why is it called an API? The real software engineers in the audience will be rofl once they get what i just said hah hah!
January 17th, 2007 at 2:10 PM
Gaybot Foxley seems to have a good suggestion. “If I get a huge random amount of money from someone I don’t know I will immediately take a screen shot of the blue pop up window, contact live help and tell the Lindens the person’s screen name. I would advise anyone else to do the same until we get more clarification on what we can do about it.”
January 17th, 2007 at 2:10 PM
I have no idea what “large amount” means in SL. I hope Linden will be more specific. For me lets say 5000 L$ is really a lot. But I wonder if this is much to Linden standards? “Large amount” is just like in RL related to income and spending habits. What a stupid Linden post.
I can’t imagine they even can find the time to post this in a time they even can’t get the grid up.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:10 PM
I will ask this again. For those of us who run legitimate businesses in Second Life, which generate substantial Linden activity each day, what does this mean for us? I suggest that someone from Linden clarify this before business owners decide enough is enough, because quite honestly this blog entry sounds like it could have a major impact on my business.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:10 PM
Zee. What is this crap you have came up with? Explain.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:11 PM
Ok what the hell? People do not have real us dollars to donate to groups that is why they donate Linden dollars. Now the group accepting the money is going to get in trouble? how the hell cqn a gift be fraud? I mean for god’s sake.
So now we can’t even donate to our favorite club or group. Thank Linden Lab. Your really helping us out here. I for one might wish to donate a large sum to a friend of mine trying to cover land costs but now if I do that she might get in trouble. I don’t have any real money to spend that is why I spend linden dollars.
SL is open source now right? then why not listen to your users. I can’t see many users liking this idea very much. Now being able to rate users as risks for fraud is good so long as it dose not get in the way of people trying to enjoy the game. and the way this system is stated to work IS DISRUPTIVE!!
Hopefully someone will open up a new SL grid now that it is open source and Linden Lab will go under so that mabye someone els who actually care about their users can run this game the right way.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:11 PM
Z,
Your post is way to vague if intended to illicit good-citizen behavior, and way to transparent if you are using the Blogs to threaten would-be fraudsters.
If someone dumps an s-load of $L onto another account, how can the recipient stop them? And as others have noted, legitimate business partners may do this as a matter of practice.
From the Exchange Risk API entry, titled “IMPORTANT NOTICE TO THIRD-PARTY EXCHANGES”
“If Linden Lab, in its sole discretion, determines that a Second Life user has purchased Linden Dollars for real currency through any means other than LindeX, and that the seller of such Linden Dollars acquired such Linden Dollars through fraudulent means, or any other means in violation of the Terms of Service, then Linden Lab will consider the buying user a complicit party in the fraud or violation. As a penalty for participation in such fraud or violation, Linden Lab will reduce the Linden Dollar balance of the buying Second Life account (and/or any Second Life accounts owned or operated by, or affiliated with, the owner of the buying account), by any amount up to 150% of the amount of Linden Dollars involved in the transaction.”
This seems to target anyone NOT registered as an exchange or doing business with an exchange for large (not determined) $L exchanges.
Is that fair, or does that really matter?
And why threaten 150% fine. I personally never carry a large balance of $L and only buy when I need them (legally I might add), so how the heck are you gonna squeeze someone like me for an additional 50% for something I had nothing to do with…LOL.
Wow. Hey, I hate thieves and fraudsters are just another type of thief. But this is all coming across like ALL of us are under suspicion.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:12 PM
Yeah…If someone gives me lotsa $$$…you better be damn sure im gunna have it spent and gone in sixty seconds!! My avi wants her own malibu dream house….and a pony.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:12 PM
I think Im in love with Shire…
January 17th, 2007 at 2:12 PM
I’m wondering who LL has on staff that is remotely qualified to develop a reasonably competent credit scoring engine. That is an open problem and *actual* financial institutions throw a lot of money and lots of people with quantitative PhDs at the problem. As far as I know, LL has neither.
So, Z, how reliable is your model? What is the rate of hits and false positives? Who delevoped the model, and what are their credentials? In short, why should your users trust your scoring model?
January 17th, 2007 at 2:12 PM
To avoid fraud you don’t give your account details away (as in the rl life example given), but not accepting large gifts isn’t really avoiding fraud is it? it’s the avoidance of being suspected of fraud.
The rl analogy doesn’t really hold up, since the rl fraudsters are asking for your account details so that they can supposedly deposit large sums of money that you then transfer to a 3rd party on their behalf (aka money laundering). In SL, to pay someone you don’t need their account details, and, as already mentioned, you don’t have the option to decline payments - there’s just a notification after the event. This comment reminds me of the Lindens “You should back up your inventory” comments (ie: issuing advice to do something which they make impossible!).
In effect, by issuing a warning “be wary of large gifts” the Lindens will probably make the matter worse - Many residents who do receive such large gifts will panic and return the gift to the sender (thus, aiding in the money laundering).
We really do need a clearer “warning” than this - For example, definition of “gifts” (Account transactions show as gifts regardless of whether services (eg: apartment rental) have been sold). Definition of “large gifts” (what’s the limit?) and, most inportantly, how exactly does any SL resident avoid accepting a “large gift” when there is no mechanism in place to do so?
Oops! Just noticed that this relates specifically to group donations, where I can kinda see how the scam would work!!
January 17th, 2007 at 2:13 PM
LIEA AQUACADE: I think I do as well…i tried to make my own stuff, but its just never what i really want and end up going shopping anyway.
And yes if someone unknown to me gives me a large amt of $L, and i get banned for accepting it, after being in SL for over 2years…i will definately be raising some hell.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:13 PM
Maybe “Z” didn’t explain it well, but I’m assuming people are trying to do some sort of “nigerian email” scam in second life. I’ve come across people in Welcome Areas who will say, “Send me lindens, and I’ll send you back double”. Well, yeah, most of us are smart enough to not do that but others sadly aren’t.
I’m guessing they are putting some protection in place maybe being a bit pro-active in the event that Linden Fraud happens.
Who knows. If you’re doing business “legally” you shouldn’t worry about it.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:13 PM
Free accounts will stir up the pile ..how bout 25l, i can do with out the hot wings?
January 17th, 2007 at 2:14 PM
Well unless I see Linden at the end of the name of the person who posts I am not going to take it seriously. I also don’t understand how it helps someone to give me there fruadulant lindens Just helps me How does it help them? Oh well was never any good at math.
And also I hardly think that the majority of us will have anything to worry about. The Lindens do make mistakes but if your patient and contact them you get your lindens back if they disapear it happened to me though it was only 9K and to me that is actually a lot to loose having invested most I make back into me land for others to use freely. How humm I do think some people stress over very little at times. And Z good idea to use your full name next time hmmm?
January 17th, 2007 at 2:14 PM
*** I have no idea what “large amount” means in SL. I hope Linden will be more specific….What a stupid Linden post.
I can’t imagine they even can find the time to post this in a time they even can’t get the grid up. ***
Then perhaps you should READ THE POST where it specifically says HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of Lindens.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:14 PM
counterfeit lindens what will they think of next
January 17th, 2007 at 2:15 PM
Zee. Listen to me. This isn’t something to bring up like this. Its really stupid. If someone doesn’t care for their linden dollars, let them give all they want. Fraud like this is a problem with the system’s security.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:15 PM
@Concerned:
What is really scary is I’m beginning to be able to ‘translate’ typoneese.
@Kevin: Thanks for the info. I also have vision problems, so I will surely check explorer 7. Curious tho, as I read your post my computer popped & all the posts got darker. Hmmmmmmm.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:16 PM
heres an email convo i had with a linden over onecase of fraud where i had ALL my legit money taken from me and i have also been denied transferring my money from my account to my paypal account and remember this i was a VICTIM of fraud
—————————————————
Hi,
We have released your account, chmarr Walcott. At the time of
release it was assessed L$1,873,000. This is the amount that your account was
given to you by a party who obtained them by fraudulent means.
Regards,
***** Linden
——————————————-
chmarr walcott wrote:
hi there
this is the FIRST time i have heard about this fraud when my account was locked down i recived NO information as to why and how it was closed untill now as for the so called L$1,873,000 i NEVER recived that… the only time i recived that much money was when i was running a “sploder” its like a lottery machine everyone throws money into it and after about 5-10 mins the sploder “explodes” and it shares the total pot of money between the ppl that entered it the only downside the sploder does not keep a record of the names of the ppl but as you may have already checked my account does which i just checked and the dates 20/12/2005 - 21/12/2006 are missing and that can only be done on the lindinlab side but as for me and a few other being told to pay back the amount that was put into the sploder even tho i have no control over it why should i pay for someone elses action as i cant afford the real dollor value behind that and i know that you have the person who made the transaction under investigation which means i am being forced to pay money back on something i did not do
—————————————-
Here is the information on the two main transactions. Payment 600,000 2006-12-23 14:13:57 to chmarr Walcott
Payment 1,200,000 2006-12-23 16:15:16 to chmarr Walcott
These L$ were obtained by fraudulent means and gifted to your account. Your request to process the credit from the proceeds of sale of a portion of these ill gained funds (L$302,000) was declined. We note that this account is in final status. If the account is abandoned, subsequent accounts will be held for fraud.
Regards,
*** Linden
————————-
chmarr walcott wrote:
but i did not know they were stolen and the “gifts” were put into a sploder ..meaning it was put into a lottery style machine and even tho it was my sploder but it randomly spits the money out to who ever enters it and the transaction account history DOES say “fair sploder” so i am being accused of fraud even tho i did not know the money being put into my sploder was stolen
————————————-
chmarr,
We did not imply that you committed fraud. What was stated was you were in receipt of funds that were obtained fraudulently. As a real world example, if someone were to steal something and give it away, the recipient would have no legal claims to it. It’s stolen goods and would be recovered.
**** linden
January 17th, 2007 at 2:16 PM
Right, and what about the small frauds, say a place renting ad panels that takes the money and then disappears? A few hundreds Linden dollars doesn’t sound much but multiply that by 100 panels, and it starts getting serious. Then they’re off to do it again.
The truth is this is another piece of responsibility Linden is trying to shirk. History had shown that civilisations cannot survive without laws and law enforcement.
And I’m afraid whatever the Linden TOS says about “licensing” Lindens, the fact that they themselves actively trade them both ways means it is effectively real currency, and any court in the civilised world could be convinced of that in 5 minutes flat.
Real currency means real crime, and these people should not be banned, but prosecuted and jailed. And since by the nature of the internet, it is both inter state and international, and serious crimes of theft, fraud and often intimidation and racketeering, that means Federal crimes with stiff penalties.
It surely can only be a matter of time before someone tests this at law, or the FBI and IRS themselves investigate…
January 17th, 2007 at 2:16 PM
Suppose you own a store and you get contacted by a new avatar who wants to go on a shopping spree in a prefab store you own spending around 60kL$. What are you supposed to do?
January 17th, 2007 at 2:18 PM
Hey, just wondering where all the Linden response in this is? Zee Linden posted this thing, and then just vanished, leaving mass hysteria in wake. I’d like to see a little response on this, because it really does start to come off as a distraction more than a serious post.
Another thing is, as someone previously pointed out, there is no way to deny someone giving you a hundred thousand L. I doubt I would deny them anyway, if they wanted to dump that on me. And if they wanted something back, I’d make them a gold star for getting me banned for three days. Anyway, three days isn’t very long, but my question is; exactly how are you going to investigate it? How do you plan on determining whether or not I paid them with paypal, or a credit card, or somesuch other thing, a completely seperate transaction from SL, to get that L? And my other question is, are they charging more or less? If it’s less than you do, I can almost understand why someone would be tempted, but no one wants to pay more for monopoly money than it’s worth.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:18 PM
Exactly how much is a large amount?(The minimum). Hundreds of thousands of $L is a lot but would 50K be considered a lot as well?
You really should make your post more clear stating CLEARLY what a large amount(minimum) would be.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:18 PM
“I’ve seen several posters in SL where groups have been used as a scam without their knowlege. The perpetrator pretended to be a part of the gorup collecting for a chairity and then walked away with several hundred USD. Meanwhile this unwitting group got flambayed and abused over their supposed involvement in the scam.
If you have had soemthign like this happen to you ro your group then please share your experience so that others can learn what NOT to do.”
OH HELL.
This happened in my groups sim a few days ago. This guy came in saying he was part of a group that was collecting Linden Dollars to help new players buy land at rates considerably lower than LL’s land prices and tiers. In a roundabout way he asked for doantions.
Considering that nearly ALL of my group members know each other outside of SL (amazing but true) we ALL immediately began a group IM about the guy. Considering the close friend’s troubles in one of my earlier posts, we all began a group IM and decided to just listen to this guy and point and laugh. The result, he finally got frustrated, accused of of not being good SL citizens by not offering to contribute to his endeavors, and he stormed off.
On a side note, I need to thank LL for creating an online world where my real life friends can hang out together. It makes us feel more like a family.
I hope this fraud issue is resolved soon and we are given methods to accept or deny gifts. Some guidelines for large L transfers would be nice as well.
*tips coffee mug to LL*
Lace out.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:18 PM
I thought the blogs were going to be more moderated. I would much rather see real questions and answers instead of a bunch of parrots chanting “who is Z” or whining about how they could write a better SL over a drunked weekend.
So.. If somebody dumps me a L$1,000,000 and I report them right away, do I get to keep the cash???
January 17th, 2007 at 2:18 PM
@ Z Linden: Live Help? Didn’t that disappear?
January 17th, 2007 at 2:18 PM
this is out ragus! we cant even donate to our own groups!? thats stupid!
January 17th, 2007 at 2:19 PM
Cappy Frantisek Says:
January 17th, 2007 at 2:14 PM PST
counterfeit lindens what will they think of next
——————————————————-
Thinking the same thing in reverse….anyway to certify $L
LOL….my RL friends already don’t get SL. They’d twist-in half at this discussion…
January 17th, 2007 at 2:21 PM
yea, yea if smeone givesme 600,000,000l$, can I keep it? ill go crazy if tht ever happens.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:21 PM
Is it just me, or is SL feeling like IRL more and more each time things like this arise out of the blue?
January 17th, 2007 at 2:22 PM
Another potential idea, what if on transactions that trigger the ‘risk’ api, the funds would not automatically *BE* delivered, but rather held until a determination is made, with no risk of suspension of the recieving account.
Or even make it an account option on the website like lindex view type etc, ‘accept risky payments immediately’ and by default leave it unchecked for everyone, and for those who do need to take things that would otherwise trigger the risk system, they could clear it but then accept the risks and possible inconveniences involved?