Alts

Just curious why people have multiple alts but no payment info on their profile. I understand that maybe there are times when you just want to be alone, or maybe you have a business and you want some quiet times where you're not being messaged constantly, but what I'm curious about is, I've seen so many residents who have been here quite a while, and I see no payment info on file. Yet they have great avatars, skins, clothes etc. and no jobs on sl. I'm not going to assume anything, which is why I'd like some opinions from other residents. In my opinion (and I could be 100% wrong) I wonder if someone who approaches me (usually to try and pick me up lol) is hiding from another alt they have, maybe they are partnered or in a relationship, married on sl etc. I don't know why it bothers me so much but it does. I don't want to get involved with someone if they have no payment on their profile, am I being shallow? lol

Lots of ppl have no payment info on file..

and how do you know they dont have a job? lots of creators have no payment info
lots of premium ppl downgraded as well..

payment info on file isnt a character ref..
theres also a chance theyre a paying alt of another payment info on file..

If one sells anything more complex than a prim build, one quickly learns that an alt is indispensable for testing permissions. And we scripters would quickly run out of friends if we tried to use them as guinea pigs.

My several scripting alts all have payment info on file, but not for any good reason. (B.t.w., they'd retain that, even if they were downgraded from premium.)

On the other hand, it's pretty unlikely that my scripting alts have been hitting on you, so this probably isn't very helpful.

That really doesn't mean much, L$ can be bought from Xstreet, ACS, several others, without giving payment info to LL.

I created an alt who looks pretty darned good (in my un-biased opinion), and while I did pass on a few L to get one nice hairstyle and a good pair of boots, almost everything else comes from lucky chairs, camping chairs and freebies posted on freebie blogs. With a little patience you can get top notch skin, hair, clothes etc without spending a dime.

So sorry if I angered anyone, I didn't mean to imply that it was everyone on sl. I only know from my experience that someone I did get involved with use to send items on his alt from his paid acct in order to hide his many identities from others and me (multiple relationships) so I wondered if this was common in sl. I never did get involved with anyone after that. I apologize for the post sounding accusing. I never meant for it to sound nasty .

the replies to your post doesn't mean that some of the time what you say isn't right, they are just pointing out there are alternative reasons. some of the times what you say is correct.

I tried putting payment info on my alt. I've tried a lot. LL apparently refuses to update her status to payment info on file... which drives me batty.

You answered my question as to why payment info isn't always there. Thanks

I now have more than one alt but they are not me, they are different characters. I have a small robot called X7 Mubble which sits on my group to pervent it from folding and is used to test permissions. It can build simple things too, but it only responds with pre-programmed responses (chat gestures) that I've fed it with.

Any other alts are secret. None of the alts are ME, Conifer Dada. They rarely log in. They never go to any of my regular haunts or meet any of my friends. They exist mainly for testing or playing about with avatar shapes.

After many years in SL I created a NPI alt just because I wanted the challenge of starting over from ground zero with nothing. We all make up what entertains us in SL as we go along. This is just my new challenge/entertainment.

hey!

i have two alts. a female one -> my "sister" and a male one.
im premium and sim owner and have payment info used but i wont mix up sensible datas so my alts have no payment info on file, but picture in the profile and text.
my alts are model, testers for permissions, backupsystem for sensible builds and my coscripters.
im working on maleshapes / avis too, so my male alt is really helpfull.
my friends know my alts and i dont interact with the alt. i have the alts chat closed cos i run my viewer and the alts viewer on the same machine.
for development i would recommend to have an alt.

It used to be that all you needed to do to set up payment info for an alt was to record the info on the website. But now, you have to actually BUY something from LL with that alt before they acknowledge the payment info in-world. Either by taking the alt Premium for at least a month, or by buying at least $2.50 USD worth of L$ on Lindex. So a lot of people who probably DID try to add payment info for their alts won't show up as payment info on file in-world, even though they actually DO have it on file with LL.

I set up payment info on all my alts, just so they don't get excluded from going places that ban people with no payment info on file. But there's really no reason for any of my alts to ever purchase L$, since my main account earns enough each week that she can easily feed them funds whenever they need it. So the only direct purchase any of the new alts ever make from LL is that one-time minimal purchase of L$.

They do buy clothes and skins and stuff, though. I try to make sure that all my alts have at least one very nice appearance, and at least one nice outfit of clothes. Even if all I plan to use them for is testing permissions, I want them to look nice, and not like some bot that the owner never actually sees, and couldn't care less what they look like.

This ID was originally my alt. She has no payment info cos when I made the move to using her fulltime, my payment info wasn't accepted so I gave up and kept it on my original ID and log her in to buy $$$ when I need to.

The purpose of this ID was to be used as a piggy bank where I would hold money for tier payments, nothing nefarious at all. Then shit happened, I lost my land and the desire to be my original ID so I switched.

As others have said, there are a lot of decent freebies around these days. You can pick up virtually (no pun intended) everything your avatar needs to look great through the freebies on SLX or onrez, or chair stalking, group gifts or store freebies.

When you see an avatar with no payment on file, you are suspicious that someone may be using an alt for deceptive purposes. How does having payment info on file change that? It's not like you are allowed to see the info to verify the identity. Some people may even make their alts premium (with the stipend and the annual plan, it's almost free).

You never know. Feed them enough LSL and they could hit critical mass, wake up, and start demanding civil rights...

You've found some, that you actually want to get into? I have yet to find NPI makes a difference outside of the testing stations.

My alts (Argent David, Argent Pinion, etc...) all have at least one decent avatar.

Technically, I'm the Alt, and Argent David is the original.

Yes I have, actually. Though the only way I usually find out about it is when I am in one of those locations and ask an NPOF friend to join me, and find that they can't enter the parcel. But I have seen it in avatar stores, clothing stores, and on several residential parcels (including one belonging to a friend, that I lived on for quite a while, before I bought my own land). In the case of that last parcel, the land owner had to ban NPOF residents in self defense, because a nearby newbie-attracting site caused hordes of clueless noobs to pass through and treat her land like a public park and free sandbox...

o_O

If I found a *store* that banned NPI avatars I'd be tempted to arrange a boycott.

My primary, Curtis Dresler, is the only one with payment info for two reasons:

1) A credit card that was used previously was compromised and the only place it was used was on SL. The response from SL security was very poor. I will not use a credit card for longer than necessary to complete a required transaction with LL. (For the record, this was not the current processing method, but the one that used to come across as some game outlet and could have been one or two processing methods ago.)

2) I had and killed off two other premium accounts and LL refuses to permit the Paypal account to be used for more than three accounts, evidently for the life of SL. On the other hand, I am seriously considering getting a low cost bank account and linking it to a new Paypal account and using that as a stop loss method for any losses in SL. If so, then my alt would have a payment method.

Finally, I am the owner and builder on the parcels, and switching to my alt, which is really my primary 'character' in SL (Harry Dresler) reduces accidents on the parcels. Until they have an 'oops' button that restores immediately an accidental 'take', I'll continue this practice...

I have two male avs and two female avs. I use the below av most of the time and switch to the others when I need some time out or want to investigate different things in SL. I am inquistive by nature - SL reinforces that for all of us. The alts all have their own groups of friends and places to hang out. The girls get access to different views and perhaps better clothes than the males. People treat the alts differently by the way they dress and look. One may pole dance and mud wrestle for the evening, another may go skydiving off the eiffel tower at midnight and another skinny dipping in a lagoon smoking a massive cannabis joint. One may even chose to hang all night in a dungeon fiddling with his inventory. All the alts are to be experimented on as I see fit and tested on with the bizarre things in our inventory, which have been boxed there for ages but we dare not open.
It's all part of the individual persona we chose to create for ourselves. I do not perv or take advantage of the male/female angle, although I could do. I like many others in SL are here to experience the pain, interaction, excitement and pleasure of SL as a break from RL, which for most of us, is usually incredibly mundane.

<stands behind podium and adjusts mic>
"My names Tegg Bode and I was an altaholic, I used to be a floating R2D2 that just built when my main wanted peace to do so. At some point I got onto group chat, started to socialise, went out one night on a big blinder grew big feet, big ears and a big tail.then on my return threw to gether a 10x10 hollow cube with one side open then said my main "hey! have a look inside this box, SHINEY!", one slide of a 10m prim side later I orbited the box and it's contents.
Then thought, "why stop here? I can rule SL!"

"How many of them were there?"
"Which way did they go?"
"I must find them, they are my minions!"

Payment history's got nothing to do with it.

You're right, Greenley...people do make alts. Sometimes they make them so they can go out and cheat on their main account's partner. Sometimes that partner could be YOU.

If this concerns you in a general sort of way, don't get into relationships. With any avatars, ever. After all, who knows WHO they are?

My advice, though, would be to ingnore it, in the general course of things. After all, you don't know who that avatar is in RL, either, do you now? It shouldn't stop you from making friends. Even very close friends.

If you're worried about it in a specific sense...that is, "Is avatar AA an alt of avatar A, who is avatar B's partner?", or "Did my partner make an alt to cheat on me?" or something like that...well, welcome to SL Drahma!

I second Curtis' reply. I am an alt who is now the main, but when my CC info was compromised, i decided to get more serious about security. I removed Allie's payment info, and changed passwords, etc. of my old main. She keeps the Lindens and will never log onto the Forum, since this is not a secure site. I have never had a problem getting into sites, but it may be because I did have payment info on file at one time.

Check the Undying Thread- it is a hotbed of alt uprisings..