WARNING Shop Owners & Buyers: New Scam

Well I think I've seen it all now.

First there was blatant texture theft and the reselling of said textures. Next was a scam where users placed invisible objects in front of vendor machines that would take money, but not deliver goods.

Now we have....

Users posing as in-store employees.

Today two vile characters posed as X2: Exotica Employees and convinced some players they could offer them discounts on all store items, if the items were purchased directly from them. These characters created a text attachment above their heads – making them seem legitimate; unfortunately, a few customers believed them and gave them some sizeable amount of Linden.

If you own a store I suggest you post signs, warning customers against this potential fraud. Unfortunately, banning these people is not enough, as it is very easy to create multiple accounts.

Ahhh, dear. This will be challenging to respond to in a compelling way.

Money brings about the best in people, no?

Thanks for the warning, Storma.

Yep, happened to me yesterday. I posted this account: /108/c8/114892/1.html
of what happened, before I saw your thread.

How freaking sad is it that we have to do stuff like this?

Ugh.

I have posted a thread here about all this, but I doubt it will do any good.

Yes, I actually became aware of it after reading your blog post, Willow. Thanks for the detective work, and the name.

Though, as we know from the new signup laxness, that name only means something until they decide they want to change it, and they can go on skipping along from av to av doing this over and over until some sort of stronger banhammer is brought down on them...

...and who knows if that will happen.

Makes me look at my spiffy new signature a little differently...occasionally one's opportunity is to get scalped!!
C'est la vie. ARs and trying to keep ppl aware of the problem is about the best we can do, the rest is in LL's hands.

After having had the same person practice this deception in our store, I'll be putting up signs tonight too.

Looks like turning "build" off for your land might be a good idea too to prevent anyone rezzing anything, be it a box of product or worse, a fake vendor. This unfortunately precludes customers from rezzing boxes they've bought legitimately, to access the content in the store.

I have created a box with the following text:

WARNING
There are a bunch of con artists going round Second Life pretending to work in stores, offering discounts, but selling fake or empty boxes.

If you are approached by anyone in this store claiming or appearing to work here - please DO NOT BUY FROM THEM as I have no staff.

which I have put in my store, as a cube or wall-mounting sign. My land is also set as auto-return after a short delay so people can't put stuff over them.

I have set them to anyone can copy, so if anyone would like to come and take one to put up in their store, you are more than welcome to do so.

Lewis

Thanks for the warnings.

Except that now it's entirely out of their hands. You don't even need to give a real email address to get a shiny new throwaway SL account now. LL don't have any more idea who their new customers are than we do now. About all they have is an IP address. And that means squat.

If anonymity made people behave like assholes before, it's just increased a few hundred fold now they're not even accountable to LL.

I personally find it amazing that LL don't give two shits about who is accessing and abusing their platform any more; and it just seems like they're basically saying a big 'fuck you' to people who already have a lot of time and money invested in it.

But numbers matter and you don't. That's the message I get from LL, anyway.

Really, they're saying the same thing to all of us, regardless of how much time and money we invest in SL.

When it becomes all about signup numbers, rather than the quality of your in-world experience... which undoubtedly will happen now that griefers have unrestricted access to do whatever they like, Linden Labs have jumped the shark.

Lewis

I agree with you, Lewis. And you too, Kris.

It does start to look and feel like a big ol' one finger salute to everyone. Very sad.

It's one big exercise in futility, trying to eliminate all these things that keep coming up. The content creators and the consumers will always be one step behind the latest scams&scammers.
You know what would break my heart? If they tried this with Starley's Limited Charmed skins.

It seems like the only thing that designers and content creators can do to keep the scum at bay is band together share names of known offenders and crush them like the bugs that they are.

Unfortunately, I doubt that's really going to help much. As we all know, they will simply create new accounts and come back and do the same. Unfortunately, the only way I can see to combat this is with huge signs like the ones posted in this thread

Kris, you've said what is on my mind lately. Before the loosening of registrations, I saw griefing and scamming a bit but never like it is now. I've seen open warfare between groups of newbies with pushguns, newbies rezzing prims to block doorways, overall assinine attitudes that screamed "underage" to me (though to be fair I know adults with that problem as well). In the year I've been in SL, I think I'd filed 2 ARs total. In the last month alone, I think I've filed at least four just using the "you were pushed by a script" auto-AR feature.

The problem isn't that there isn't any enforcement (though there really isn't - not so that it stops anyone, which should be the point of enforcement anyway). The point is that even if there were, it would not matter. New avatars are about 2 minutes away, absolutely free, and you're back in business.

LL's enforcement wasn't that great before this change. Now there's no hope of them keeping up, as they just quadrupled their workload. And we're left with pretty primitive tools to try to control the damage ourselves.

Turning off build is one option - it certainly stopped one griefer from flooding the sim with his junk prims after he was banned. Oh, but how is it that a banned person can rez prims on land from which he was banned in the first place? Ask LL.

Increasing enforcement staff is another option, but that means additional expense for the club or store and finding people they can trust not to do permanent damage, even accidental, with their officer powers. Where are those additional levels of group functions we were promised, LL?

What may have seemed like a great marketing idea to the Lindens before they lowered the bar has become a nightmare for existing users, and has only served to alienate most of us. Some business decision.

Would that be a legitimate use of a chat relay box in your store, so that you can record chats while you are out?

I know that most people just delete the notecards they get when landing at a store, but I posted this on a notecard at Depoz Ink and anyone coming there will receive the following.

!!!CAUTION-SCAM!!!!
Seems there are a few individuals going around to stores in sl and posing as sales associates, offering discounts on merchandise. They may or may not have phony groups set up, with sales associate above their head. You pay them and they offer huge discounts on merchandise and in reality you get empty boxes or freebies instead. Please use extreme caution when purchasing items from someone who claims to be a sales associate, manager, etc. at any store in secondlife. Depoz Ink DOES NOT have sales associates!! DO NOT FALL FOR THIS SCAM! Thanks! Mash

Im running out of places for huge signs... I have to keep all my business practices in my profile, in notecards in gift boxes, occasionally signs. Do people even read them? I've been switching my stuff over to no transfer and i label each item no transfer in the description and still I get people who buy them and don't realize they are no transfer.

I've just put together a script capable of detecting new visitors and sending them an IM, giving a notecard, popping up a dialog box and/or loading an external web page. All options are configurable through a pop up menu and you can set your own individual custom messages for IM and dialog box as well as set the URL for the external web page via the same menu (using chat to record the messages/url).

The script is full permissions and comes with a brief instructions notecard.

If anyone wants a copy then it's available here (just find the box with the floating text over it that says "Free Visitor Announcements Script, etc etc" then touch it and it will give you the script and instructions in a folder).

Sun.

Not to get off-topic (at least for long, sorry) ... but as a 2-month old newbie (tomorrow my 2-month anniversary, btw) I was surprised that many things I buy are "no transfer". I can fully understand "no copy" and possibly "no modify" (though, why can't I modify something I've bought I don't understand - I can in RL). But the reason(s) for "no transfer" eludes me.

This came up when I bought something to give as a small gift (flowers actually) to someone for helping me greatly my first week here. No one has logically explained the reasons for "no transfer" to me.

After all, if I transfer the item (presuming it was "no copy" to begin with), I lose that item. There still exists only that one paid-for copy of the item. So what is the loss to the vendor?

Thanks from a newbie...

Every item has to be set to at least either copy or transfer. It's possible to enable both, but this effectively allows the person who gets one copy of such item produce and give away/sell any number of them.

Items are normally set to "copy" if they can be modified, since this allows new owner to experiment with changes and still have a 'backup' in case something goes wrong. Some items like clothes are also set to copy even when they aren't modable, to allow owner compose folders of different outfits with the same item, without having to buy multiple copies.

Since setting both copy and transfer allows unlimited resales, things that are copy-enabled are typically made no transfer, and vice versa... ones which you are allowed to pass to someone else are copy-disabled ^^;

I'm pretty sure it's always been legal to put chat relays on your property to monitor your home/business.. Now I think it's still against TOS to post the chat from them.

Just a quick update for anyone who stopped by to pick up a free copy of the visitor announcements script mentioned above. It appears I accidentally left out a line of code (sorry I was kinda rushed at the time and as I didn't have 50 or so visitors hanging around it meant I didn't really get a chance to test it fully).

It's all fixed now, so for those who want one the updated version is available from the same location, or you can just IM me and I'll send you a copy!

Sun.