Second Life Account Loss Crisis

A huge number of people have lost their accounts, due to the recent security issues. Many people simply did not give real information (or remember it) when they originally gave the info for their "security question". A large number of people have more than one account that they use (with money tied up in it) that they are afraid to mention to the Linden staff for fear of losing it, or concerns that because they used the character to "mess around", or look or talk in ways they normally would not (not really griefing, just characters they nornmally wouldn't want to be identified with.)

The result is the total loss of thousands of accounts, and new database bloat created by new accounts hastily being created to replace them. This doesn't ultimatly benefit anyone, as people wanting to create secret side accounts are going to do it again anyway so long as it is physically possible (and I suspect the Lindens don't feel this is as important to worry about as one might think, especially because they removed the credit card/paypal/cell phone requirement for registering new accounts).

Generally if people want to remain anonymous or play some outragious character, they should be able to so long as they don't activly harass anyone, steal money, or destroy data. Linden Labs will still make money from the activity (but not from people being frusterated and giving up their accounts.) ote that creative people using free accounts still makes Second Life a more interesting place and will still have the side-effect of attracting more paying customers.

I'd like to ask the Linden staff to do one of two things:

1) Initiate a probationary period in which ALL as-yet unrecovered accounts can be accessed with their original passwords. If there are any accounts later said to be "ripped off" by the person who downloaded the password information from the Linden database can be reported by their original owners and investigated b Linden Labs - but more importantly, the legitimate people can have an oppertunity to recover their accounts and change the passwords.. but they NEED to be ale to use the original one.

2) An amnisty could be granted to all accounts that people may be ashamed of or may not want to reveal for fearof losing them. This means that people can then be reassured that if they do report their existance to the Linden staff, the accounts, money, and objects will not be lost forever. If the account is to be used for griefing, future reports of misbehavor can be acted on accordingly.


I also suggest the creation of the ability to merge two accounts together. This means a person can decide what original (or base) name, etc. the character should still have, but then all the property and "pointers" to the previous character then point to this other character. This would solve the problem that happens when someone is forced to create a new account because they wanted to change their name, and also would allow people with multiple accounts to consolidate them all into fewer ones when they know they are no longer going to use certain ones anymore.

This would be an effective way to change a character's name - so I dunno if we'd see that happen. But honestly, if we could I would just to change my name and retain all my stuff. ;D