Scams & Cons Forum & the Beauty of No Verification

Nicola I want to believe too
I don't Know why but reading your post brought a tear to my eye.

I think because it has given me a vision of the future that I don't like very much and... and scares me to be completely honest.

Jon (referring back to your post about IP banning), even if LL won't IP ban scammers and griefers, it is entirely possible for players to at least track the IP addresses of scammers and griefers on their premises. This would prolly break the TOS, but given the severity of the situation, here goes:

1) Set up your own audio stream for your store using shoutcast (an audio-streaming add-on for winamp). This little audio-streaming wonder not only logs the IP addresses of every listener, but also time-stamps them.

2) Set up a scripted device on your store premises that logs & timestamps the names & keys of every avatar passing through your store's land parcel.

3) Collate the data daily and pretty soon you'll have the IP address of every scammer plying their trade on your premises.

There's prolly far more elegant and effective methods for doing the same task, but being totally ignorant of the wonders of LSL, it's the only solution that I can think of off the top of my head.

Would that work if the scammers have their streaming audio turned off?

No, it wouldn't Suze. So much for that idea... it falls at the first hurdle

Do you have a store, or shop alot?

*looks at secondlife.com/vote/*

*sees a "Bring back age verification" proposal*

*also sees it was created today*

*looks at the 711 votes already*

*adds 10*

This is no longer the game I paid for. I want what I paid for back.

haha - I thought that was quite ironically hysterical, too.

coco

Yes, but in this case we have underage people coming onto an adult grid, and - I contend - probably greater migration of predatory adults to the teen grid as a result of the laxer atmosphere.

This is playing with fire, and once the media get ahold of something that has happened - and the chances of something happening are much better now - all hell is going to break loose.

So it all depends on whether LL prefers publicity like that over less publicity.

coco

Putting up signs in both my malls on the behalf of all my tenants warning about the scam, including a notecard giving tips on how to tell if you're talking to someone legit or not (not!). I am giving the sign/notegiver away to anyone who wants it for their own mall/store.

There are merchants here who run dozens of locations with no way to be in every single one. Many of the merchants in my malls are of that variety and I can't be at both malls all day, and still build little buildings for fun and a bit of extra $L cash. I lost a morning's work and hopefully did a small bit of good to help protect both my merchants and their customers.

Its sad, really, when the icky sides of FL intrude into SL. I for one am happy to leave dirty dishes, smelly laundry, cleaning toilets and a certain time of the month behind when I come to SL. I really wish I could leave behind the fraud, theft, scamming, hatred, bigotry, and other associated human shortcomings, as well. The best I can do is surround myself with the best folks that SL has to offer, rally them against the worst that finds its way here, and at the end of the day, hope I had some fun along the way.

What I pray for untlimately, is that the LL 'solution' to the problem, doesn't untlimately shoot LL and SL in the foot further than the original problem has already done. In other words, I hope it is a far-sighted, long term solution and not a short-term, near-sighted one. I'm not saying I personally know exactly what that is, in a matter that satisfies both LL goals and the return of some semblance of normalcy to our SL lives, but I hope they can figure it out, and quickly.

I have added my votes to 1503, and am encouraging my friends and acquaintances to do so, as well. The difference mere days has made is all too clearly proof that the impact of the new system has been both immediate and detrimental and something needs to be done.

Char

I'm informing other Lindens on the Community Team of threads like this so we're all paying attention to the issues involved. If anyone has already compiled a list of all the recent scam-related threads, please email that list to [email]me--torley@lindenlab.com[/email].

Wouldn't want to miss out on it.

Uh. Luna's a he.

A pretty he, but a he nonetheless.

Anyway, I completely agree with the opinions voiced in this thread - lack of verification basically just opens up the floodgates to griefers and scammers. There's an infinite supply of alts now, so why should they care if they get banned? Five minutes later they're at it again.
As upsetting as it might be to have to see a Scams and Cons forum every time I come here to check out the New Products forum, if that's going to help protect the content creators who fill that forum with their latest efforts? So be it.

Yeah, I joined Second Life when your first account was free and yeah, I HAVE made an alt or two since then, but with legitimate purpose. When i first heard this news I was floored. Things aren't going to get better if everything keeps continuing this way. As Nicola (I believe?) said - the Lindens either need to hand over the tools that can protect us, or start using those tools themselves.

<Tosses her six Linden into the pool.>

That's the thing about this veritable orgy of bad planning. While I agree that EVENTUALLY Second Life will have to be completely open, without age verification, there are a few things that need to happen first, some of which you mention:

(1) Better privacy controls (which should have been in place before P2P teleport)
(2) The new group tools should have been launched for more granular control
(3) Shared ban lists you can subscribe your land parcel to, including checkboxes for ban by IP address and ban by MAC address (don't show them; keep it behind the scenes)
(4) Better access controls overall for land management

This reeks of a marketing decision without thought.

ONCE AGAIN, LINDEN LAB: PLEASE RECONSIDER. While I think most of us agree that if Second Life is to become the 3-D WWW, this will be necessary, you're got a *LOT* of work to do before we're ready to remove LL as the gatekeeper.

I fully applaud Nicola's post. Please consider the people who are in agreement here. To give a taste of the medicine I've been taking lately, the new SLBoutique design has been popular, but removing our categories has not been in the slightest; given that negative feedback, we're working night and day to bring them back for a customers. Maybe you should take a hint from how we do business in this case. This is far larger than ResMods - it affects 100% of the population, not 5%.

Regards,

-Flip

They're responsible for ensuring that the platform has enough people in it to make it viable going forwards, and this is a good way of achieving that. They're still doing their job as gatekeepers but have just changed their dress code



The only scamming that's come to light recently has been perpetrated by residents born well before the change in registration rules so I am yet to be at all convinced that the registration change has any relation to this. In addition, a few examples of griefing does not a torrent make. We all know that it goes through waves and I'm really yet to see any concrete trend that griefing is getting out of control as a standard rather than it being just a wave (or even just a ripple) as we've seen many times before.



Linden Lab's biggest concern is making sure their platform is well adopted before competition arrives. Otherwise there will be nothing left for you to believe in here as it will quickly disappear. This has less to do with LL's bottom line, and more to do with ensuring there's enough uptake now to still have a bottom line to think about in the future.

3 years. Only 250,000 accounts. You know, it really needs to shift up a few gears now as competition will arrive sooner rather than later.

I also disagree that this has no benefit to current residents. It's of benefit to current residents if the platform expands in use. It's of benefit for the current residents who create content if they have a much larger market to sell to. It's of benefit for those seeking entertainment as more options are presented and greater numbers of niches form. It's of benefit for the overall mix of the world as new imagination and ideas pours in. It's of benefit for the current residents because, without it, we'll end up being ex-residents of something called Second Life which was great for a while but died a death because it never had a mass uptake and couldn't survive.

What's happening now is not a "mass uptake". It's just a bunch of alts and teens who shouldn't be there. One guy with 10 accounts does not equal a strong and enduring community.

You know, for somebody who's obviously so sure I'm willing to bet that you couldn't actually produce any proof at all that your statement is anywhere near correct.

Please, correct me if you can.

Prop 1503 has the second highest total vote count on the proposal board... it should mean something to the Lindens.

Not if they've determined that enacting it isn't in their long term interest.

I can't send email from work here for some reason, Torley, but here you go - list of most of the threads mentioning the scams:

Scams & Cons Forum & the Beauty of No Verification
/108/19/114967/1.html

An open letter to Philip and Robin
/108/72/115026/1.html

Skin Scam
/108/c8/114892/1.html

WARNING Shop Owners & Buyers: New Scam
/108/ba/114869/1.html

Uni study... or market research for scammers?
/108/e1/115148/1.html

How do you feel about the new registration system?
/108/0a/114951/1.html

Warning: (NAME REMOVED) using manager scam
/108/24/114984/1.html

This is why the new registration system sucks major ass.
/108/4f/114896/1.html

Warning - (NAME REMOVED) scamming newbies
/108/f2/114859/1.html

Robbed?
/108/ce/114282/1.html

Well attachments on the AV can't be returned, pretty easy to sit an alt down wearing the blocking prims, move them into place, get an anti-idle script on, bamb you are in "business". Then a second Alt can pretent to be the manager.

I think most people might be suspicius when they try to pay a vendor and they see a radial menu showing options like (view profile, add friend, exc).

I wonder. SL is not just another adult website that has you click the, "Yes, I'm 18" thing. It a place where people come into a virutal world (full of virtual sex) and live, virtually, and interact, in mass numbers.

Not only is it a potential pedophile's paradise, but convincing a judge that it is only a "platform," or "just like any other website," or (needless to say) that it is "the internet, only in 3-D!" may be a very difficult sale considering that it looks for all the world like an MMOG, acts like one, and is described as one in the media.


By the same token, if they make policy changes now that cause their "platform participants" to depart in droves, then the platform will hardly be "well adopted before competition arrives."

Enough bone-headed moves now, and there may be very little in the way of participants, platform, or bottom line left to preserve later on.

A worse (and more likely) danger, in my opinion, is they fail to set up what would be considered reasonable safeguards against pedophilia; something terrible happens; and the resultant lawsuits and bad publicity wipe LL out.

coco

P.S. While I'm thinking about it, what the hell do they mean, "We're not worried about the teens on the adult grid as much as the adults on the teen grid?"

Teens and children on the adult grid WILL be found by pedophiles on the adult grid, and what happens there would be just as terrible as it would be if it happened on the teen grid; nor would Linden Lab liability be considered moot because it happened on the adult grid.

*i'm not saying teens in the adult grid is fine, or a good idea. the following are only opinions...*

i'm no lawyer, but i think LL's ass is pretty safe on this topic. at least as safe as half the other "adult" sites on the 2d web. they ask. you can lie. your parents didn't stop you. i'll admit to having visited at least one adult site when i was 14'ish, and i'm not in jail, dead in a ditch, hooked on crack or living with a 70 year old r/l mistress. i may be the exception, and i'm not a female, but meh. if i were to judge, i'd pin that blame on the parents before i would the company. you as the creator of such content in SL certainly won't take the heat either, so i'm not sure where the problem lies. then again i'm also of the school of thought it doesn't matter if a 12 year old sees some boobies, and in a general sense, engages in "naughty rp". net predators are a different issue entirely, and i think should continue to be handled the same way they always would have been. the police. i don't know how acct creation works on the teen grid, but i'd say it's never been that hard for an adult predator to get on claiming to be signing up for his or her child, and likewise tons of teen parents just hand over the credit card if they ask them for it to sign up for an online service, especially games...i've really never heard of any parent who wouldn't (excluding you, yea you, that person about to post telling me you'd never blindly sign your kid up for something!) i don't recall grieving or minor sex being much more an issue before we had a teen grid than it is now.

please don't eat me, i mean you no harm