Skin Scam

Yesterday my business partner and I had the pleasure of watching someone teleport into our store "Tete a Pied Skins" wearing the title "T & P Skins manager" (sic) over his head and then unbelievably, IM her to tell her he had half price skins today.

Not knowing this, I asked him if I could help and alerted him to the fact we were in fact the owners causing him to imediately tp out of there.

Concerned by this we sent an alt after him with IMs to try and buy a skin. To cut a long story short, he claimed to be selling Naughty Design skins this time around, and sold the alt a box, for which he was named as the creator, decorated with the ND logo and containing... Linden skins. We saved the chat transcript, alerted Lost and AR'd him. That there might be people in our stores doing this when we're not online, taking advantage of our customers and damaging our reputation is not a comforting thought.

He is clearly practicing this deception with respect to more than one skin maker so if any other of you would like to contact me in game I'd be happy to pass on the individuals name so you can at least add him to your ban list for what it's worth.

EDIT: Seems this may not purely be related to skins as per this thread: /108/ba/114869/1.html

*sigh* This shit's getting rediculous. And it's been happening more since Day Of The Free Beast.

How's this sound. I'm starting a security group, one of the posssible functions would be to monitor member's stores and watch for suspicious activity, and non-authorized avs trying to pull scams.

Takers? Lynchmob? Beuller?

It really is getting silly. There's obviously a group on a fraud blitz now.

I think that actual human monitoring probably *is* the only way to stop this... places hit seem to have been fairly well-known and well-trafficked shops, if I'm right, so there should only be a small number to check. Of course, can't be everywhere at the same time. But a group of volunteers might be able to cover them fairly well until these people give up.

Burke, good idea. I would alert the store owner (and the unwary customers) anyway, but maybe a group like you suggest would have specific stores it checked in on regularly?

I'd join in a heartbeat, and what's more I'd do it for nothing if that's what it took. This crap is really pissing me off and my store isn't even open yet.

Yep. Members would pay us weekly for whatever kind of service they wanted, routine patrolmen would drop in, look around for anything suspicious or glaringly obvious. I'll post more in seperate thread in a little while, got to work out some deets in my head first.

The alt thing is going to be a problem, but inspite of that I'd join a group like that. There's an informal situation like that (see Willow Zander aka Lemon's exploits) with some h4rdc0r3 shoppers, but it's likely something a little more concrete would do more widespread benefit...
At the same time, Jessian Vigilanteism should be avoided.

Weeee! So we went from having "Manager" scams pulled by new alts to a full on "Protection Racket" like the mob used to have ... awesome.


I know ... I'll make alts and use them to terrorize people's stores with Scams .. then come in with my real character and claim that I can stop them if they pay me! If they don't agree to pay I'll scam more until they fold and I get money from both the scams AND the "security" side!

(No, I'm not at all claiming anyone here is doing this, of course .. but .. how easy would that be? - the real solution is to stop the Freebie scammer/griefer accounts at the Account Creation screen.)

Is he another scammer?

Not exactly. The home security and car alarms businesses in this country make their money from the fact that crime is a serious threat to your property. Anti-virus software companies make their money from the fact that there are bad men out there wanting to steal your information and infect your computer. The home security and anti-virus companies didn't cause the problem nor are they twisting anyone's arm to buy their services (though some of them exaggerate the risks in order to sell product).

I don't know what exactly Burke will propose, but I trust him to be honest and genuine with whatever he decides because that's been my personal interaction with him. And frankly, as I said in my other post, I wouldn't go into it to make money, myself. As it is now, I alert store owners if I see problems without even belonging to such a group. What the group will do, though, is to establish some coordination, perhaps a coverage schedule, share names of perps, etc. I could see it having all kinds of benefits without the group even being a for-profit organization.


I don't think LL will be doing that, at least any time soon. In fact, going strictly on past performance I honestly have lost my faith in the Lindens to provide any solutions to this problem. If the citizens of Secondlife don't do it ourselves it's not going to get done. That's the harsh reality.

I appreciate Ordinals suggestion of residents checking on stores, but this has to be an issue for LL. As it happens I don't feel mine is a particularly well known store, there must be literally hundreds of content creators like me - too many to check. Furthermore I'm still in the game for fun not profit, so I'm damned if I'm paying anyone to play security Mr Prefect !

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

Correct. SL isn't RL though. In RL if someone rips you off they can't just vanish into thin air and cease to exist. Criminals are caught and punished when possible. People are held accountable for their actions. Here? Well, with the anonymity of the internet at their beck and call these people can run rampant and do as they please.

If you want to equate it to RL ... I'd think this is more like a riot. Random people doing bad things and looting and you can't get a good "look" at them because of the chaos to prosecute them after. They'll never be caught.

I see the "good' in a security force, or what-have-you ... but I see a potential abuse in the waiting.



Like I said in my post above. I'm not claiming Burke or anyone in this thread would do anything eeeevil ... but ... what if he starts a "Company" as a group and calls it "Burke's Security". What is to stop the SCAMMERS that he is trying to ward off from making "Burke's Security Force" and scamming people out of protection money?

Already there isn't much a Security team could do. They show up and find someone Scamming in your store. What can they do? AR the Scammer. Talk to the Scammer. The scammer TP's out ... deletes ... makes another Freebie account and comes back to terrorize another store.

Hurray! .. your store is safe! ... until Security leaves, and the scammer pops on a new character and sets up shop in YOUR shop, again.

These people are like suicide bombers. You can't scare them. You can't combat them effectively. They rush in, do their damage, and die off (delete) only to be replaced by another.

They don't care if you ban them. They don't care if you AR them or scream at them and humiliate them. There are NO consequences to their actions right now until LL does something about it.

They just scam, yell "Yoink!" and change their identities.



I've only been around for a month ... so I don't know how this type of this usually gets handled, but if you have little to no faith in the Lindens to solve the problem then I'm appauled. People aren't just losing Gold Coins from some silly normal MMO .. they're losing currency that directly converts to RL currency. While it could be argue'd that Gold from other MMO's has "no actual value" ... a L$ is advertised TO HAVE actual value.

For the Lindens to do nothing is to doom their world to chaos. Without "daddy" making rules the children will run rampant and act like animals.

My personal vehicle has been broken into twice in the last year, costing me thousands of dollars in RL damage. What has my local police force done? Nothing. They took a report. No culprits have ever been caught and I seriously doubt they'll ever be. My response has been a new car alarm and a motion-detector flood light in the parking area. It won't stop anyone still, I realize that, but the parallel is very similar: when law enforcement breaks down, you act to protect yourself.


That's a detail that would have to be addressed, certainly, but my concern goes more to how the contracting stores would have any control over individual security people as well as how the individual security people would have any means of enforcing anything on the spot unless they had access to land controls or a security device.


One, if the scammer sees that your store has hired security patrols he's more likely to find another store that doesn't have security. Two, while the scammer can always make new accounts, if a security person or store employee intervenes in a scam and saves a newbie their precious few $L, you've saved yourself a customer and possibly a long-time SL member who otherwise might have given up in disgust. This has more benefits to the concept than it does drawbacks, I think.


Which should never mean that nothing is ever done -- you have to fight it in any way you know how, and that includes petitioning the Lindens here, over in Suggestions, and in-world at town meetings. Over and over and over until they understand that their policy changes have done some very grave damage to the confidence many SLers have in this world.


There's still plenty of time for you to become disillusioned too Just wait.


Daddy not only isn't making rules, he's not enforcing the rules he HAS made and in fact has thrown open the floodgates to total chaos. With the new registration process you may as well not even bother with a Teen/Mature separation, let citizens actually kill each other and declare the world wide open like Sociolotron. It would only be formalizing what they've already done with their foolish goal of 1 million subscribers.

I kinda hate posting this since it can give the jokers ideas but when I was first setting up my mall I had these 2 guys show up on my land proclaiming themselves to be Insurance Agents and wanting to sell me insurance...which I promptly declined to buy and of course afterwards there was the usual griefing and push bomb episodes....etc. For a mall as large as mine and even one one quarter the size there is absolutely no way even one person on the grounds could prevent a griefer from tping on in and then going and taking advantage of customers.

Its pointless to pay anybody for security that is undeliverable. In fact if one were that concerned, they could hire somebody to work at their store as a sales associate and deliver the same functionality, but the number of small vendors who can afford paid sales help is going to be small.

Vigilance on the part of land owners, vendors, and customers is currently the ownly workable solution, with the customers being the weak link and anybody in game a few weeks will learn the hard way how to avoid scams. Sadly new people off on their own will continue to be victimized by the unscrupulous no matter what, but we can all do our best to minimize the activities of the SL underworld.

Yup .. it sucks, and hurts, and infuriates you. I'm in NY, I know how that feels. I've had my car broken into once, my home ALMOST broken into (the dogs we had at the time scared them away), been chased (both on foot and in a car by another vehicle) and had a beloved parent murdered a block from our home. I still live here, for some reason.

It hurts. It really does. It hurts worse when you really feel like the system has let you down and there is nothing you can do about it. Law enforcement doesn't always "get their wo/man".

You can protect yourself all you want ... but if someone is completely determined to hurt you or cause you grief (or scam you) they'll go above and beyond to do so. With how easy it is to come back with a new name and attack you or your customers again it is VERY hard to combat.

So you shoo them away from your store this time with security. Then what? They attack someone else. "At least it wasn't me"? They move on to torment and scam/grief the next person on their list. You going to have 24/7 Security in case they try and come back later?



True .. you protect your store for now, and save a newb from getting scammed. Problem is, all you did is divert the bomber from your store to another down the street. The MAIN part of the problem is just deterred, not solved.



I agree 100%. Without the Lindens stepping up this will just get worse.



I'm cynical, jaded, and bitchy IRL ... I come here to relax and be my carefree self again. PLEASE don't tell me I'll convert over to being a heartless wench here too



Happy Father's Day LL! (Sarcasm) If Daddy isn't doing his job ... who does daddy have to answer to? In this case, no one.


Oh, BTW, I played Sociolotron for years. lol


"HURRAY WE'VE REACHED 1 MILLION SCAMMERS! ... er .. I mean .. subscribers!"

Well, here's one hopeful thought. When they DO reach a million "players" (aka alts) they close their doors and SL returns to some semblance of normalcy. They may have figured on all of what is happening coming to pass and reckoned that it was worth short-term chaos for the ability to claim to have some huge (fictional, of course) userbase.

Bleh.

This may be a horrible fix, but you might want to consider creating "Announcement Speakers" around your stores that deliver a message to your customers.

e.g.

"Welcome to STORENAMEHERE, your patronage is appreciated. Shirts are the North, Shoes to the East, West, South, and all 20 upper floors. Please remember that there are no store owners on duty. IM YOURAVNAMEHERE if you have any questions about the products."


Is it annoying: Yes
Is is a stop-gap measure: Yes
Is it something we want to do: No
Do have a better solution?: =C

I've posted this in another thread but after reading all these threads about the scams.. there is a sign in my store, warning people that people offering "discounts" WILL take your money and run.. and to make sure that I am the owner of the vendor you are purchasing from.

Just wait until the scammers get their own bull horns proclaiming they are the store owner and don't trust anyone else.