Credit Cards do not make you an Adult

Credit Cards are NOT a form of age verification.

I am twenty-four years old and I do not have a credit card. Many wealthy families give their children credit cards with restrictions only on the amount they spend, and others pay little attention to what 'games' their children are registered to.


Second Life still requires you to submit your birthdate when you sign up, and that's all the age verification it ever had. If you lie then you are breaking your agreement with Linden Labs and can be banned at any time.


There are and have always been teenagers on the main grid. Though some eventually admit it and leave or are banned, there are always new ones to take their places.


Please, stop all this protesting about the removal of Second Life's credit card requirement. There is no sure-fire way to verify a person's identity on the internet, including their age.

Kids with credit cards are an EXTREMELY small minority. Maybe not every adult has a credit card, but if you've got one then there's like a 99.99% chance you ARE an adult. Incidently, not having a credit card is a lame excuse. You've got a bank account right? Call your bank and say 'Check card please!' Accepted everywhere credit cards are without being a credit card. Barring that, debit cards.

I understand some people have a personal preference against having lines of credit, but check/debit cards aren't credit, and refusing to get one is just being stubborn for no reason. Unless your bank doesn't support them, but I'd get a new bank, cause that's retarded.

Heads up. DEBIT CARDS ALSO COUNT.
It's to HELP PREVENT asshats from just registering willy nilly.

But it's all gone to the hippos now.

But. Come to think of it. I'm not sure I would have paid for this alt.

People shouldn't be forced to get a card like that just to register with Second Life, and for some that's not an option.

Many adults have mental or social handicaps that prevent them from doing things you might think are simple, and this is no reason they should be kept out of Second Life.

As I said before, lots of kids get credit cards from their parents and others simply use their parents card. No matter what you do you're going to have kids in Second Life. Maybe the number will increase somewhat now, but it doesn't change the fact that they're in there.

The credit card requirement was not a valid method of determining age and it needlessly impeded responsible adults interested in using Second Life.


Many people I've known over the three years I've been on Second Life have refused to join, initially because you had to pay, then again when it was free due to the credit card requirement. Some people aren't interested in ever paying for Second Life and they don't want to give out their credit card information to strangers.

You're missing what someone else has already pointed out, however. While kids could use their parent's card or whatnot, if they get banned for being asshats they're actually banned. What are they going to do, go 'Hey mom, can you apply for another credit card? I got banned from SecondLife using your other one.'

Both For and Against posters raise good points.... you raise good ones as well.

What disturbs me, is that they don't seem to verify email addresses. I know it's trivial, but come on...

They give their credit card information to strangers every day at the supermarket or the mall. The 'OMG ONLINE SHOPPING IS DA EVIL' bullshit that gets perpetuated sure is pretty ignorant. Scams do happen, but they happen in real life just as often. Giving LL your credit card number is no different than giving it to Wal-Mart.

As far as I'm concerned, people who 'aren't interested in ever paying for Second Life' can just not join. That bullshit keeps cropping up and it's so amazingly retarded it barely dignifies a response. Let's see:

- Other MMOs, WoW, EQ, SWG, EVE, FFXI...nope they all charge a monthly fee.
- But SL isn't a game, it's the Web 3.0! Last I checked internet access wasn't free either.

Why is SecondLife different?

It's not.

German debit cards don't work with SL and you must pay a fee for credit cards. I'm just lucky that I get a free credit card from my bank because I'm a university student.

Erm, because in that particular analogy, you're still paying for your Internet access and not been charged more for visiting the web (unless you opt to subscribe to certain sites etc). So, you're mixing your apples and hippos Replace web with web 3.0/SL-like-thingy - everybody's still paying for their internet access, regardless.

Being a few months shy of 22 I recall quite clearly borrowing my mothers debit card and credit cards (with her consent) for online games like UO and EQ when I was 14-17.
I don't see credit card varification as anything but a barrier in the way of registering. The funny thing is, of all the people who I've tried to get to sign up, it's my older adult friends who are the most reluctant. Somehow I think younger people are a bit more impulsive about giving away that sort of information, and getting their way.

Anyways...wouldn't it be a hoot if the worst of the griefers were adults?
We need stricter bans, not brick walls.

I think you make a very good point in your first post. The only thing I see as a real problem about all of this is the ease with which you can make an alt - I shouldn't grumble, because I did myself, and use it for 'quiet time' - (I also state in that profile that I'm not a new player so people don't try to help me out!). I think it's the ease of making new characters that's having an effect on the age problem, not the credit card deal as such.

I know a friend of a friend who signed up and put in his real birthdate without thinking, not knowing it would send him to a seperate grid to his 'adult' friend - it's not obvious that's why they're asking for your birthdate. Now, if he were to do that in the current system, he could just as easily do it again but with an older birthdate and get into the adult grid, whereas before it would have cost him.

So if it's contributing to more underage players in the adult grid, I think it's for this reason, not because you don't need a credit card - it's because it's easy and free to make a hundred accounts to get you into the adult grid in the first place and then bring you back if you get banned.

I think you'll find that it's not all about age verification for many people who object to the changes - though you just said it yourself, there may be more kids now. And that in itself is a problem.

The problem is one of identifying people. A complete lack of any accountability at all. And a credit card is a reasonably good way to get some accountable identification.

As it is, any asshole can sign up for SL in seconds with false info - hell, you dont even need a real email address - grief and scam to high hell, get banned and come back 2 minutes later.

Apparently a large part of the reason for changing the registration process was that some people consider registration with any kind of activation or identification too 'high friction' - even including merely clicking a link in an email to activate your account to prove you gave a real address.

Well I'm of the opinion that anyone who wants to join the community with so little accountability doesn't deserve to be a member. And that's why I object to the change and am for the protest.

Well in the UK it's kind of common for people to have multiple credit cards (I've got 3, for instance). Oh and then there's the Paypal option that LL used and the SMS verification.

To be honest, it was pretty flimsy. It gave the impression of being age verification, and most believed it, but it wasn't exactly difficult to circumvent in reality.

That'll be true when SL becomes an open standard like the web is now. Currently however, we have to access the internet inside the internet.

YEah, I've got three or four myself, but they all have a common named tied to them, and they're not exactly inexhaustable.

Even with multiple credit cards, I think they still tracked the name on each card and the billing addresses. Sure, anyone can have more than one credit card, but it's harder to get a credit card with a fake name than an online account with a fake name.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Is a CC# a rock solid way of keeping out minors? No.

Was it better than nothing? You decide.

BS BS BS BS. LIAR LIAR LIAR. If your 24 and dont so much as have a debit card... You need to move away from online gaming anyway and sort your life out. Its true kids sometimes have credit cards, my mom gave me a 500 limit card when i was a little 16 year old girl.... because I was mature and handled myself like an adult. I never once used it.

I've had a debit card since I was 18. I now have 2 credit cards and the debit, at 24. I find it hard to beleive a REAL adult would not have any plastic.. Its unrealistic in this day and age... What if the water heater goes? Car breaks down? So many emergencies that having a CC protects you from.. Its BS to not have one as a mature responsible adult- IE the type of person who want feed off of being a lame ass griefer 24/7.

Bring back the old registration and delete any accounts made during this debacle. Im up to 6! My friend made like 20some. Its stupid.

Credit cards are popular in the US, but here in Europe, we mostly pay in cash. I tried to pay with my debit card for some fish food and they denied it. The transaction fees would have been too much compared to the product's price...

20 accounts omg how do this person remember those pass words

The biggest advantage of a credit card is that in in principle provides a means for a given customer to actually pay for the service at some time in teh future should that customer choose to do so. A customer without a credit card can never do so, and so will always only ever be a drain on server resources.

This is quite apart from the fact that it can act as an (albeit flawed) age check. There aren't really any perfect age checkls that can be implemented, but to remove even the pretence of trying to verify age is to invite a lawsuit.

The lack of accountability and the ease of creating throwaway alts is also a direct encouragement to anyone who would want to grief the system. Tieing accounts to a credit card (or some other resource which cannot be easily obtained) seems to me to be the most efficient way to prevent throwaway griefer accounts.

I understand credit cards aren't common in Japan, either, or at least haven't been until recently.

I was searching for info about non-CC means of age verification (see my post in Feature Suggestions) and saw a note posted on a winesellers organization site that said Visa is now specifically prohibiting using CCs for age verification. Interesting.

Perhaps credit cards were a bad solution and needed to go. But proceeding without a better means of checking age (and RL identity) was a *really bad* idea. In 10 minutes of googling I found all sorts of alternatives to using CCs for this. I'd really like to know why they didn't implement one. Perhaps we'll hear more today.

Yeah, you can stop laughing now.

neko

Credit cards don't make you an adult, but ultimately, it forces an adult to be responsible for the actions. A minor cannot get a credit card without co-signature of the adult on the account.

Actually there is, but not everybody have an Iris Recognition device plugged into usb. And the fee for such service would cost LL spine bones.

And credit card is an easier way to charge money for anything. If you don´t intent to pay, we´re not interested in you. sorta thing.