How is this legal?

My IP address changes all by itself for some reason. I've never done anything to change it, nor ever had any kind of IP ban anywhere that I needed to avoid. It just happens. Usually it's because my laptop keeps dropping it's connection and I have to reset the router by turning it off and on again.

That's the solution to most things; turn it off and on again.

I figured it's because not even your computer wishes to be associated with you...........

i garaouelle Giha, had a very similar experience, and i can find no way to find balance/justice...
i got, (i think) suspended, for telling some one i wouldnt stop what i was doing (that is enjoying myself HARMLESSLY,) and that their problem was their connection or graphix card, as my bubble wand could not be slowing them down, i mean, for goodness sake, i was using a laptop myself, so if any one was gonna be slow, surely it was gonna be me..... no?

well a few minutes after i left that sim, and went to a friends club,...... i got booted off!!!!!..... then when i tried to sign back in, i was told that i was NOT ALLOWED TO ACCES MY ACCOUNT.. MY..... ACCOUNT... goodness!!!!

and could not do so until... well, it seemed at first that i was not allowed for a few hours, now that a day later has passed, i have tried to sign in again, and, i cant for almost another week,
well, why cant i have had the chance to put my side of the story forward, before this happened,
i think that this means that any one can call any one a griefer, and get them (me) chucked off... should this be allowed? this dude could have had any agenda, and i was thrown off without any facts or contexts being checked... he may now be walking around with the smugest grin at my expense....

also their is NO WAY for me to contact any SL team to put forward my case and get back on... how shoddy is this, how amateur and how..... well, how almost synically abusive in its self....

so i am stuck out here and cant get back on to perform my in world responsibilities until the end of this week,
and some guy who needs a better connection OR graphix card is going around thinking that any time his laptop is slow, that he can get folk thrown off..... this is sick, isnt it?

suspension policy is NOT WORKING

umm, i get what you mean here, but you are missing on point...she cant get any access to sl, SO HOW CAN SHE RESOLVE IT, UNLESS I GREATLY MISUNDERSTOOD THIS..... (WOOPS, CAPS.....)
i've been unfairly booted and i cant get back in.. also i cant find any where to put my case, so i relate to your rather sensible reply there, but i also feel pist as i cant get in to rectify anything and no contact thingy to put my case forward....


either that or SL is all stuffed up again.. it isnt the most stable system i have ever used, to be honest...


wich brings me to my unintentional conclusion...... in my case i may need a friend like that to say things for me... why? (, i think i got booted unless there is a fault in the system but i have NO WAY of finding out, and cant6 without a frieds help because i cant get in to find out...) i got booted out and cant get back in due to words that (that is IF i did get booted) some one has or may have reported (they had what was obviously a bad connection or graphics card, and blamed me for having a bubble wand, for them being slow..... now, i am banned as a greifer (maybe, i dunno, i only know i am not alloowed to acces my account) now.... without a friend to put my case, that is to say, PUT MY SIDE of the story, (you talked about ONE SIDEDNES?) then how can both sides be fairly taken? WELL, IN MY EXPERIENCE OF LIFE not at all....
these words are not in anger, just simply puzzled, she cant get in, so how can she resolve it? very puzzled....

From what I understand of what the OP has said, the friend in question was suspended temporarily pending an investigation and then given a permanent ban for using an alt to circumvent the suspension. According to the OP, their friend did infact try to circumvent the suspension using an alt and is therefore guilty of the offence for which they have been banned. This is a fair and justified ban.

Whether they had done anything wrong to warrant the temporary suspension is irrelevent; they deserved the permanent ban for misuse of an alt. When LL are investigating someone for fraud, and they then notice that person using subterfuge in this manner, it is prudent for them to assume guilt on the part of the subject of the investigation - honest people do not use alts to circumvent a temporary suspension. From LL's point of view, the misuse of an alt in this way casts sufficient doubt onto the OP's friend's honesty to justify a ban. I think LL have actually done the right thing by banning this person, regardless of whether they were guilty of the fraudulent purchase of L$ or not. Misuse of alts in this manner should be punished and an example set.

Had the OP's friend followed the rules and just sat tight and waited for the results of the investigation to exonerate them - maybe got a new hobby for a few weeks, read a few books, visited a few art galleries - then they would, in all likelihood, not be banned now.

TL; DR Summary -
They weren't banned for fraudulent transactions, they were banned for being stupid enough to misuse an alt to get round the temporary suspension. Good.

I agree with you to a point -- I literally yelled at her words, then remembered to type and capslock what I said (seeing as she doesn't have voice) when she said she was going to try to come back early, and now I'm starting to literally get sick of her complaining, because she claimed she KNEW it would happen if she was caught again -- but let's go over what she was told by the people around her:
1. That she was banned indefinitely (from a place she loves unnaturally -- she still can't go three days without being depressed about the situation) for an unspecified offense that, when searched on Google, comes up just about empty (fully empty when you quote it up as "disputed Lindens". This is all she was ever told by Linden Labs -- that, and that they were forbidden to tell her anything about the investigation.
2. Her lawyer friend told her about a situation wherein someone is still waiting on a dispute that originated in 2006. I have no information indicating this, though I did find (while Googling Disputed Lindens, no quotes) a case wherein LL banned an avatar and his alts for allegedly using an exploit to purchase a piece of land for below-market value in 2006, and I had to look pretty closely to see that the case was eventually settled out of court, after LL lost a motion to keep it out of the courts, late last year. So this may be what he was referring to, and he's just lousy at looking up stuff. Having said that, she heard this and panicked.
3. Her next couple of attempts at Live Chat ... have you gotten the Kevorkian disconnect from these people? You know, the dead silence for minutes, or even hours, at a time, until you give up yourself? I know I had a 20 minute lag where I was the only one typing once -- she hit a full hour twice. Granted, she wasn't very politely wording her messages by the end of that hour, but they definitely started out well within the realm of reason.
4. She got an e-mail, three days after she calmly typed out... okay, I confess, I typed it for her and told her to cut-and-paste it ... a support ticket that reasonably asked what was going on. This e-mail suggested that 'we have proposed a solution' and to check her ticket. She went on, joyous at the idea that her agony would be over, and found... a closed ticket with no comment, let alone solution, whatsoever.
Wouldn't YOU think you were being intentionally screwed with at this point?
To claim that they couldn't say anything to you, and then, to claim that they could end your trouble right then and there, only to link to a dead end... I know for a fact I'd be in San Francisco before the week was out, attempting to strangle someone, no matter who really was responsible, and I commend her for not doing that, when her investment in Second Life is far greater, both in money and emotions.
This is when she made an attempt to be linden-neutral and come back as Viv. Unfortunately, she ended up spending about 10,000 L$ in SLX to get her character 'perfect' to rejoin our RP group, and I know SLX uses Risk API, which may have clued them in. Or at least the usage of an account associated with a blocked avatar to purchase funds for a no-payment-information avatar.
Therefore, it is her fault for being banned -- though, hell, three of her avatars' profiles are still accessable to anyone who friended them; probably the other two, as well, but I never bothered to keep them in my list; still, can they bloody make up their bloody minds? shouldn't a permabanned avatar be, you know, DELETED? -- but I don't really blame her that much, because she was jerked around for most of a month before she did something she really knew was wrong, and she took the runaround as confirmation that she was banned, and they just didn't want to bother justifying it. (Like garaouelle, I guess, though somehow you CAN access the forums, and there's nothing in-world that helped US worth a damn. So you're doing much better for the moment.)
God, I wish I felt confident in her ability to argue points, because if she wanted to invest the time and money, she could just about sue for emotional distress, and WIN, at this point. (Though she's thinking along the lines of appealing the ban based on extenuating circumstances... and hoping for a sympathetic ear. She's willing to give up every Linden she has in every account she has just to come back, though.)

Basic account and/or anyone with a disabled login:
http://secondlife.com/support/ > Ticket Submission

Ticket Type: Special Questions - Basic account or Guest Login > Account Issues > 'I get an error message that my account is Disabled' OR 'The system says my account is Disabled or Suspended'

Fill in the rest as necessary.

Premium account:
http://secondlife.com/support/ > Live Chat

Your friend is emotionally distressed, but she can't blame LL for it. She needs help, her attachment to SL is unhealthy. LL is guilty at most of poor communicating at most, I doubt a court would prove anything else. Your friend violated the Terms of Service, perhaps more than once. It may have been frustrating when she was initially suspended, but the adult thing to do would have been to wait until it was straightened out. It may have taken some time, but she may have been able to return. Instead she decided to try to back door it and got caught. Too bad. but she needs to move on and find a new hobby.Perhaps it's best, as it seems she has trouble keeping things in perspective regarding SL.

Okay, you're going so far as to be reasonable at me. Not sure if saying 'how dare you' would come off as a joke, but you're right. It's certainly not up to legal standards, and not provably intentional in the least, so unless there's still a hole in the TOS like that previous case I mentioned (they changed it after losing the right to force a dispute into arbitration, so I'd assume there isn't), she doesn't have a genuine case. Possibly a bid for sympathy, but that's about as likely as the Rays winning the Series. Figured from the beginning of the season, that is (Lord, wish I put a five spot down on THEM... but I digress).
She freaked out the first time she was blocked, reacted badly to that with her support tickets, I don't KNOW how she worded her support calls (I know I'VE never gotten hung up on by support, though -- dropped by my network doesn't count), and honestly, it's a life lesson, isn't it? She wanted it all back rightnow, couldn't wait, and as a result, she can never have it all back. (I was going to say 'unless LL changes its mind', but again, it's exceedingly unlikely.)
I can't promise she won't 'knowledge up' and try to skirt the system again -- I have no control over her in the least, and she is an adult (technically, and she'll even occasionally admit her pre-adolescent behavior in her mid-twenties self) -- though I can promise I won't help her, and I got her to promise me not to even try for a month, in the hope she'll be a little more recovered by then and less desperate... maybe even moved on into her real life, though she keeps telling me 'you first', and I'm really one to talk.
Although if she's still looking for an outlet in a month, I'm sure there's SOMETHING on Active Worlds that'll help tide her over til Champions Online and White Wolf Online come out.

I think you're being far too kind to SL. If they ban someone, they owe them an explanation and a chance to clear it up if it is a misunderstanding.

If I were barred from SL with no explanation, I'd be hopping mad. I bet you would be too. I doubt you'd just sit quietly and do other things for over a month -- without even the possibility of discussing it on this forum.

Hopefully this is an unusual case -- as we know, screwups happen, and if the person is beligerant it's understandable that she'd get less than stellar responses from her attempts to pursue the case.

The fact that the banned party has serious problems is beside the point that SL should not ban someone without explaining why. It's silly to assume that if SL bans someone, it's always justified, and the banned parties should have no recourse at all. This is worse than merely bad communications, especially if there wasn't a good reason for the ban in the first place.

Absolutely

And if the ban is just a suspension during an investigation they need to make that clear.

They need to spell out the process so the person can try to get their account back in a reasonable manner.

This Guilty until proven innocent mentality they seem to use is bad enough.

But Guilty until proven innocent and you dont even know what to do to prove yourself innocent is bullshit.


----------

Again that assume we got the whole story. Its possible they told this person more about what went on than we know.

Though I do suspect that Brenda's right that there's no legal recourse here unless large sums of lindens were lost, essentially defrauding her of value. I doubt there's any law that would force LL to explain why they choose to refuse service. If I understand it correctly, in the US you can refuse service for any reason as long as it's not one of the specifically protected ones (e.g. race).

But there's law, and there's ethics. We as LL service users owe it to ourselves to hold their feet to the fire (such that we can) to urge them to do the right thing, rather than look away and say "someone else's problem".

No doubt there are facts that we're unaware of (as always). But based on the facts as presented by the OP, it *looks* as though LL has not behaved as they should and as we need to demand that they do. I fully support the OP posting here and raising this issue.

And of course, Brenda *is* too kind -- we all know that.

Alright. There has been news on this situation. Unfortunately, it's more "They think THIS is good customer service?"
Ahem... this "Solution" showed up in her e-mail box just the other day, with a link to a page that only contains THIS:
Greetings Valerie, Linden Lab has determined that you have used at least one of your Second Life accounts in violation of the Second Life Terms of Service. Such actions result in the removal of your account from Second Life. We have determined your primary account and all alternate accounts will be permanently banned for said abuse. Kind regards, Linden Lab
* 2.6 Linden Lab may suspend or terminate your account at any time, without refund or obligation to you. * Linden Lab has the right at any time for any reason or no reason to suspend or terminate your Account, terminate this Agreement, and/or refuse any and all current or future use of the Service without notice or liability to you. In the event that Linden Lab suspends or terminates your Account or this Agreement, you understand and agree that you shall receive no refund or exchange for any unused time on a subscription, any license or subscription fees, any content or data associated with your Account, or for anything else.

The link is accessible to me, as well as her (which is key, seeing as her Accounts page has been blocked since that week). I won't post it here, but I'll e-mail it to my friends to test if they can see it -- I'm not asking strangers to trust my links any.

This is exactly the same e-mail she received on September 9th, except with the quote of section 2.6. But this does NOT specify what violation she made of the TOS (I mean, we can guess, but they haven't said what happened), nor does it say why she was blocked in the first place.
And I'm fully in agreement with Lear -- just because you CAN do this legally doesn't mean you should. I'm about ready to start studying Active Worlds to figure out how to create a non-Second Life location for our group. Because MAYBE they'll notice about two hundred people giving up on them -- which is about all we can do to hold their feet to the fire at the moment.

They definitely should explain. That is good business. But we all know that LL knows absolutely nothing about running a business. If I were banned in a similar matter, I'd be annoyed, yes. And i would ask for clarification, but I would not stew over it. If after a reasonable amount of time no satisfactory aanswer was received, I would simply move on and find something else to do for entertainment. I have no emotional attachment to SL and very little of a financial one, so it would be easy for me. But I do realize some do have a deeper attachment. But it still is not worth the handwringing the OP's friend is going through, in my opinion.

I do agree with his thought to take his group out of SL. That is the only way LL will straighten out their horrid service. By people walking out.

Agreed on all points. How I'd feel, how I'd force myself to get over it -- though it was seriously going extremely well with Mich until the e-mail came (which was in the form of *We have proposed a solution*, so her hopes shot up... and crashed down). Now I'm pretty sure this isn't intentionally screwing with people's heads, just someone responding to one of her additional support tickets late. But I definitely agree on the lack of competence being astounding. (Still, City of Heroes, Spore, and Mass Effect seem to at least be keeping her occupied for now, and she seemed to have rebounded to 'resigned' by the time I talked to her... but she's about ready to write them to either let her have another chance, or take her accounts ENTIRELY out of the system to prevent this kind of false-hope again.)
And if it WERE my group entirely, I'd be on Yahoo Groups and soliciting AW programmers already. (Or finding out if one of the other virtual worlds allowed our type of group -- their TOS's are a bit stricter than SL's, unfortunately.

I would raise the issue of communication and customer service in the M Linden blog response thread. Really, it's unacceptable that this level of communication is so banal that they don't explain what the actual abuse is.

The investigation process is a joke from the view of a casual observer, and frustrating to those who just need a little guidance (e.g., don't buy L from anyone that does not use the Risk API). There is nothing that resembles due process here, even though LL is not obligated to maintain your account and can terminate you for any reason. It's just a matter of good business, and a person who was highly invested in SL (albeit in an unhealthy fashion) cannot now play, and put money into the game. Absurd, simply absurd.

Plus, I'm sure she will discourage anyone she knows from joining, as well as her friend the,OP who has a group that he is looking to possibly take elsewhere. It really is not good for the product.

I agree with Brenda. (OMG!)

There's another thread here where someone claims to have been banned without any explanation other than being accused of fraud (and of course claims not to have been involved in any fraud). Said person is using an alt account to use the forums, presumably from a library computer somewhere (or just lucky LL didn't catch him making a new alt).

It's a tough situation on both sides, but LL owes their customer an explanation and a chance to respond. In this case, perhaps the rather unhinged party interfered with their attempts (if any) to deal with the matter. In the other thread, the accused party has responded and got a notice that they'll be looking into it. Seems like a more reasonable process.

Even in companies with the best customer service, sometimes the customer gets inadvertently screwed. What's really important here for most of us is whether this is a systematic failure or merely an unusual case. Unfortunately, there's really no way for us to tell, other than to be on the lookout for similar cases (which admittedly are hard to spot because people have to ask friends or create alts to post on the forum -- and I suspect that only a minority even bother with the forum).

In the year and a half I've been in SL, LL has shown that this is no anamoly. There have been enough stories here alone of their awful service on the backend, and their bungling of many issues from the gambling, banking and ageplay fiascos coupled with inept communication, speaks for itself, as far as I'm concerned.There needs to be a culture shift out there in SanFran if SL is to survive. Unfortunately, that may mean SL will become the dull, sanitized Disneyplace that will make it not worth visiting anyway.

I see your point but don't share your pessimism.

However, a pessimist is never disappointed.

From what I can see, you are referring to my post - and yes, I DO claim not to have been involved in any fraud whatsoever because, guess what, I haven't....what I cannot understand is that they banned me without warning or explanation of what and when the fraud supposedly took place...I phoned them last night all the way from Ireland and the guy on the other end of the line, a nice guy btw, said that it should all be resolved within 12 hours - 24 hours later and the situation remains the same...If they explained to me what, when and where the fraudulent activity was, then perhaps I would be able to supply them with an explanation, but of course they haven't

Okay, just short of crashing, so I'll head over to said thread in the morning. I wonder if it'll help at LEAST get a stop to the useless responses to her dead support tickets that they closed out already without remarks? (I ask for so little... and boy, do I get it. -- Dilbert)