How is this legal?

My friend has been blocked from all of her avatar accounts over the past few weeks, stemming from a PayPal issue that purportedly needs resolving. Having said that, she was unblocked last week from her primary account with the understanding that if she removed her complaint, it would stay unblocked.
Today, she was blocked from her account without explanation via e-mail, IM (as if that would be possible) or phone message. Not a word.
I'm getting so seriously frustrated that I may cancel my account outright in protest.

it's perfectly legal, you could ask yourself why your friend hasn't resolved the paypal question?

I just love these "my friend..........and SL is being to mean" threads. Unless your friend is your spouse or significant other or someone extremely close (child, parent, brother, sister, etc) living in the same habitate then you are only getting one side of the story. I doubt you have all the facts at your disposal. It sounds like some sort of billing issue if PayPal is involved.........that makes it very personal. Your friend needs to take care of his/her personal business in private. Not here on a public and open forum.

My advice to him/her is to take care if it. My advice to you is mind your own business.

wow so harsh... geez

SweetDeb its not harsh if this is the 100th post like this you've read before and 99% of the posters have had to walk away with their tail between their legs, after explaining that their 'friend' had indeed done something wrong to get in the situation in the first place.

Although I must admit I haven't read a 100 posts like that yet!

She placed a complaint on paypal regarding a payment to SL? Thats what I got out of it. If thats the case then I can understand SL suspending the account to investigate. I think your "friend" needs to take it up with paypal to resolve the issue and then approach SL about reinstating her account.

Where was the question in this? Ok let me help ya out...

Did your friend bother to actually take the time to correct whatever issue was going on with Paypal or did they just assume that everything was great cause the account was unlocked?
- LL will unlock the acct if a transaction in question (treated as fraud) is taken care of, however, if your friend did something to the effect of purchasing $L via Paypal on seperate occasions and then thier issue came up with Paypal, LL may have locked the acct for the initial transaction, unlocked it when that one was paid for, and now through investigation found that other $L was purchased with that same questionable Paypal acct.

Did your friend bother to log into the support portal http://secondlife.com/support/ and submit a ticket as follows:

Basic or Guest account holders should fill in the dropdown ticket fields as follows:

Ticket Type: Special Questions - Basic account or Guest Login
Basic or Guest Access - only a few ticket types allowed: Account issues
Basic Account issues: The system says my account is Disabled or Suspended
Disabled Issues: I believe my account was disabled for a Governance issue

Premium account holders should fill in the dropdown ticket fields as follows:

Ticket Type: Technical Issue
Technical issue: I can't log in
Crash/Error: Error message: account is disabled or suspended
Disabled Issues: I believe my account was disabled for a Governance issue

Posting the rant here in Residents Answers on your friend's behalf really does nothing at all since for starters, LL does not read these and even if they did, they would NOT speak with you regarding another person's account and idle threats of leaving SL because you do not like that your friend is having issues that they could easily take care of on thier own will really get you nowhere.

Well, first off, the subscription feature of this forum is defective, I got none of these responses, so that's why this is my current response.
Now, as I have heard, her alts are being blocked specifically until "an investigation, involving (her) receiving disputed lindens, is resolved"; additionally, her PayPal and credit cards are locked from being used to create a new avatar, as she found out when she attempted to create one to tell her friends what's happening (luckily, she has my e-mail, and I spread the news around). This is all she's gotten, without any hint as to how long it's going to take. But it's completely removed from the first issue, it seems, unless that's what the specific dispute is... My concern is, by e-mail, she's almost sounding suicidal, definitely hysterical and boiling in rage... which I will objectively admit is a massive overreaction, but she loves our RP sim and the people in it so much, it's not funny. (I'd get almost as angry myself if this were happening to me.)
Thing is, she needs a straight answer about this. How long do 'disputed linden' investigations take? It's been nine days so far, but if it's attached to the previous PayPal dispute, it's coming near a month without resolution.
Oh, and Peggy Paperdoll... you'd be surprised how good a friendship can arise out of Second Life exclusively. She's a better friend than I have IRL.

Did she buy the Lindens from a 3rd party site?

I'll ask her, but I'm fairly certain her main income is from designing clothing in-world.

DON'T BUY LINDEN FROM ANY WHERE BUT LL OR SLX (.)

thats the issue stolen linden, drop it she/he is not going to kill them self over a RP sim.

Second, if they had any knowledge they could re create a free account with no payment and be back in in less than 4 minutes...
sorry, I to hate these "my Friend" threads...

I hate when people cannot or will not speak for themselves. Unless this person has a problem speaking English, "friends" need to let well enough alone or encourage them to speak for themselves to people who can make a difference.

First off, we can't help other than tell your friend to call LL and figure out what is wrong with billing. Between her and LL, it's their business and they need to work it out. If your friend doesn't understand what's going on, she needs to articulate it in a way that makes sense and doesn't leave anything out other than specific numbers.

There are lots of legitimate reasons why LL would block access to the account. Selling L on a suspicious site or to a suspicious person is one of them, but with as little as we know, it is only one of a few things we can think of. Anything we say now is pure speculation and that isn't terribly helpful to this "friend."

Your friend needs to get on the horn with billing via phone or live chat and don't leave without a straight answer. Coming here is not going to help.

She did make a new one. Once she received some lindens to buy her new skin, she was blocked within a minute. They're monitoring her IP address now, like she's the criminal. And I care a whole hell of a lot about her, so please show some bloody sensitivity.

Having read that, part of this is blowing off steam, because the ratio of her action to bitching to me about the problem is definitely annoying me. And, maybe her attachment to this place is a little much. So I've made it clear to her in my recent e-mails. Including explaining why she came on with a free av while the investigation is proceeding.
Alright, if anyone can come up with anything concrete about this from what I've said, I'd appreciate it, but otherwise, I'll spend my efforts lighting a fire under her backside, primarily.

Cristalle is 100% correct.
There isn't enough information for anyone to do maore than speculate as far as been. She needs to take it up with LL, or at the very least explain it herself here in the hope someone can help her.

I referred her directly to this page, if she wants to she can elaborate on what I've said. She's been throwing her hands up in defeat a lot from the phone and the support tickets, but maybe this'll be different enough to give her hope.

Okay, she says she's blocked from the forums because her account's blocked. Is this normal?

Yes - unfortunately the two are linked. A ban from SL gets you banned from the forums as well.

I expect this is why these sort of questions come here second hand, so to speak, but without first hand details of what has happened it is not possible to give an answer.

I see nothing wrong or negative about someone seeing the problems that a friend is having, and asking about it in the forum. This is forum, folks. This is where all sort of things are discussed, including the problems that friends are having. It doesn't need the friend's personal input to be a perfectly good topic for discussion.

No, but when the details are minimal you really can't do much more than speculate and drift. It winds up not being much use to the OP.

Good point, though I appreciate Phil's supportiveness. Valerie (her most used av's name) is still fairly wound up about the subject -- she's more addicted to SL than I am, though she's currently channeling her rage into Age of Conan, pretending the Picts on White Sands Isle are all Lindens (similar to what I do with my bosses, tell you the truth) -- but once she's calmed down a bit I'll ask her if she wants me to post her details. Though the support process seems to be causing most of the anger, so it may take a while.

Phoenix, I am sorry what happen to your friend yes sometimes for some of us our SL friendships seem more supportive, incredibly close and special then anything we have in our first life and I know this first hand so yes I understand your concern.
It is true though we can't do anything about it except listen and make suggestions,
but everyone already has done that.
So all I can say is I got no clue what happen with your friend, weird stuff happens sometimes for whatever unknown reason.
Knock on wood I have never experience that but friend had issue bit back last year.
Some dispute or jealous person lied said she was under 18 and she over 50, she proved that she as and it took week to get her account back.
I was upset person who made that claim against her I think should been banned for false abuse report.
Yet end it all resolved itself.
Just remind your friend that it will resolved encourage them to take steps needed, regardless of what happens you still be there for them.

I guess a question would be... where did she get the lindens to buy the new skin?

Having a night to sleep and come back to this, your friend needs to realize that LL will not reveal all the info out of necessity. They are probably not telling her who exactly is involved with the disputed lindens (though she should know, since she probably bought them off eBay or something). If she was a willing accomplice to a laundering scheme, they wouldn't tell her their game plan! That would be dumb.

It is against TOS to buy L procured from stolen credit cards or other illicit sources. I suggest that your friend read up about the "RISK API" in the knowledge base to understand what LL does to counter fraud.

Actually, they do that to everyone all the time. They used to invoke it with too many alts and they keep not just the primary, but a list of IPS used, even if only once or twice. Sounds a bit Orwellian, considering how many things they just choose not to do that need doing. They also seem to operate with the presumption that you aren't working through a server with more than one person having the same external IP.

Paypal is something that LL does not handle well in my experience, starting with their limit of using the same account on only three avatars, whether the first three are still active or not. But SL belongs to LL and only LL and they can do as they wish, pretty much and what they do most often is overreact when their interests are threatened - a really good reason to hope that the OpenSim process doesn't gravitate toward recognition of what transpires on one grid is automaticaly fact.

And to several replies, yeah, sure, fine, but LL has finally admitted error on three occasions with my account, although none of which were ban-level. LL certainly reserves from my experience the right to operate with far less than the entire story known to them.