Watch Your Linden Balances

Dearly Darlings,

There seems to be a new kind of thievery here in SL. Last night while my RL/SL sister was AFK some nasty person stole some money from her account. Bad thing is he put sex toys in her inventory! That is not her style. She has filed an abuse report. If you feel your Lindens are a little light when you check your balance you may want to check your transaction history to make sure no one is stealing from you.

As LL is not responsible for loss of money, it is our duty to stop this type of activity. The avatar will be banned from all of my property. I shall take the matter up with every business ower in SL I am aquainted with.

This was not a Noobie by the way.

You all have a lovely day!

Ever Yours,

Mrs. Showdog Tiger

Can the OP or someone else please follow up on this? This is troll, right?

Well, I guess I should have looked more closely, as Showdog didn't just fall off the turnip truck. I still don't understand why you're describing the end of SL so casually. Forget copybot; if people have figured out how to take money out of your account at will, then what's the point?

There are no known exploits that allow someone to just take $Ls from you when you're AFK...you're sister need to check her transaction history, to help her balance her $Ls.

Missing some money and an extra item shows up?
hmmm.

LOL

Dearly Darlings,

Victoria is a very responsible person....She's my sister RL. This was very upsetting to her. I helped her via the phone to peek at her transaction history. She does not have an SLexchange account and was much to my chagrin, when this took place...AFK. There were several odd things in her inventory that she read to me that she says she did not buy, and I believe her. It is clear she had been playing club games etc. and not shopping at a store.

I've helped her set up an account with Ginko. Lord Sullivan and I racked our brains trying to figure this one out. We can not think of a way this could have been done. But then again I'm an older person not well versed in the computer world. The only thing we could think of was a sale gone wrong and the asset server (I think that's what Lord called it) did the wrong thing.

I walked her through the Abuse Report. Other than that there really isn't anything we can do.

I personally don't keep much money in my avatar as being the treasurer for a charity keeping all the bank accounts straight would be a nightmare. And I alway right click when I do any paying function to make sure The proper person is being paid. Not too long ago some folks had set up invisible prims in front of teller machines at some in-world banks.

If this is a problem with the game, then LL will have to do their job and get to the bottom of what ever happened. Two old ladies screeching will not help them get their job done.

And if vendors are sending products to people with a debit script we need to know about this too. We use one of these in the lottery ticket sales machine so that the seller of tickets off site from Arosa can get their share of the ticket sales; so I know that such scripts do exist.

When I recieve things from people I don't know I delete or click ignore. I'm sure Victoria will be much more careful in the future. However, I've know her her whole life...she will not let this rest until there is an explaination for what happened.


You all have a lovely afternoon.

Ever Yours,

Mrs. Showdog Tiger

Other possibilities:

OMG!!! or is it ZOMG!!! How do I explain that new toy I bought to someone who thinks I'm not that type? Uh oh! Ummm I Know!!! Someone put something in my inventory and suddenly my account is less.

OR

Someone at the physical location of the computer: Hehehe. She walked away from the computer. Hmm . I see she's logged into SL.. I'l just buy something for her. heheheh

IC your response doesnt make sense. Why would someone call their sibling (who doesnt have access to her acct in the first place and therefore cant SEE what's in her inventory) and say, "oh hey, money is missing and now I have sex toys." I mean, if no one knew how much money she had or what was in her inventory, why would she care to say that crap to explain something that no one would know about anyways? As far as money being stolen, it IS possible. There was a resident who had gotten into some trouble and knew he would be kicked out of SL so he created a script to steal a ton of money from people, to go out with a bang so to speak. Well, he did come back to SL a year later and contributed positively to the game but was banned again due to his earlier theft. In any case, all Im saying is it is possible if someone finds an exploit and knows how to use it to their advantage.

Look at the time the purchase took place in your transaction history. Translate that timestamp into your time. Ask your sister where she was at that time, and check her story.

Contact LL. Give them the timestamp of when the items were purchased, the account name, the item names and tell them to investigate in case anyone was logged into the account from a strange IP or hardware hash. That may help detecting possible fraud.

Of course, get your sister to change her password. Then make sure she uses *strong* (not easily guessable!) passwords. A good bet is to use both letters and numbers - and to avoid words you might find in any kind of dictionary.

I'm Jewish so don't even go there. I tried to answer you privately but you don't allow that.
Two nice old ladies put their reputations on the line because one has been defrauded and you act like toilet paper! I'm sure that who ever did this was counting on them being too embarassed to say anything...they picked the wrong targets. You are huffing and puffing because some one says..."Oh my... I see a virtual oven...let's not go in." Shame on you! Since when has Showdog EVER done anything that was not for the best interest of Second Life? She and her RL/SL Husband Maneo Suntzu and the head of her In-world charity Lord Sullivan have never done anyone ill! Shame on you!

Abby

I don't get on very often because of family illness right now but I got a call from Abby Schnook RL. She told me that some one thought Show and her sister are begin dishonest. I'd bet my daughter's life on either woman.

Tem

Mind explaining to this gentile what being Jewish has anything to do with it? I'm really just being nosy/curious.

That said, this sounds mighty bizarre. It's unclear from Showdog's posts, but do you see any trace of the money being given away in the transaction history in your Account Settings on the SL web site? It not only shows you $L credits/debits but also lists any time an object has passed from you to someone else... it also says who received/gave the money/items.

Wildefire,

You must be very young. During WWII many "good" people stood around and did nothing while some of my family were hearded off to the gas chambers in Poland. Granted this is a game but no one must never allow bad thigs to go unnoticed. It never gets any better.

Abby

Dearly Darlings,

Victoria has been advised by LL to change her password. Lord Sullivan explained to her about the need for something other than letters in her password. We are contacting the vendor in question for his information. We have found people who have bought his store inventory and have found him to be honest. I don't think there will be a problem in getting his transaction history which shall show that my sister was not in one of his stores. In addition, an investigation is underway. Who ever is responsible for these transactions will not be a "Happy Camper."

Mr. or Ms. Fetid: You do not know me or my family. How dare you to presume that I or my sister would put our selves in a position of redicule with out a warranted reason. If there are any multi-sylablic words you do not understand you may IM me privately and I'll help you with vocabulary.

Our purpose was to let people know that there was a problem! We clearly stated that TOS did not allow for any monetary recompense. Someone stole from her. That is wrong. Dispite the fact you do not believe this happened if someone stole from you I would want to protect your rights too.

Okay. I WOULD debate you on whether it's appropriate to compare the Holocaust to ANYTHING related to a videogame- but I had my suspicions that, UNLIKE the Holocaust, this thread was a hoax, and your response confirmed it for me. Thanks, and enjoy whatever metagamey thing you've got goin' on here. Toodles!

After reading through all this, it still makes absolutely no sense. How exactly was money "stolen"? You didn't go to any detail other than to say that "someone stole money, somehow". That's like bush saying there were WMDs in Iraq.... it's vague, and most likely just a story to cover up something else.

SL requires CLIENT INTERACTION to allow money to change hands. The client app can't just decide to give money away to someone while you're afk. That's just absurd.

Then I ran across this:
"But then again I'm an older person not well versed in the computer world."

Then maybe you shouldn't be playing investigative reporter, if you don't understand the basic concepts of how SL avatars are controlled. If you need a reminder, here you go: Avatars are controlled by a RL person using the client SL application. In other words, a person makes avatars "DO THINGS". So, then this means that someone made your sister's avatar "DO THINGS". OK, so maybe she didn't do it, but someone had to be sitting in front of her computer to "steal money". If she was AFK, then nobody on any other computer could have controlled her avatar. So, it must have come from her computer.

I know this comes accross very sarcastic, but seriously, it sounds more absurd to me than copybot.

its a simple matter. goto account history, then see were money went. tell ll.
get money back if it hasnt been cashed out.

I would recommend looking for rootkits or trojans on the computer. The only way I can see that this could have happened as described would be if something like BackOrifice was running on the computer.

The only way it can happen is if someone got her password and is logging into SL as her. This would be why SL said to change the password. And yes no matter what there will be a track of everything in the account transactions history. Unfortunatley it will not show who did log into her account.

If I was going to be a person who did log into someone elses account I surely wouldn't transfer money to my real account or buy something from my own vendor. The person who sales the "extra item" would be the last person I would suspect. There is also nothing that would suggest an exploit or vulnerability in SL.

As long as she changes her password she will be fine. She shouldn't have a problem tracking down any unauthorised transactions and most sellers will be happy to correct the problem after the situation is explained.

As far as Argent's suggestion. That is always good policy. I religously clean my computer with multiple tools.

Not necessarily. She said it happened while she was AFK. That is, logged in to SL but not in the room. To me that makes it seem likely that either (a) some person physically entered the room and performed the transactions while she was away, or (b) someone running a rootkit element like backorifice did the same thing remotely.

I'd also advise her to do a complete system scan with spyware, adware, malware, trojan, virus etc etc scanners. It could be possible she has a keylogger and someone hijacked the account.

Though with all the copybot mess (and theft happening I never would've expected to happen) who knows. These hacker kiddies could have found some kind of hole or whatever to steal L$ now too.

But I think doing the system scan would at least give some piece of mind and possibly nix one possible cause of this.

Good luck and hope this somehow gets resolved

Your all laughing thinking *ya right his sister did something and is trying to cover up for it but this does happen. My sister and i were shopping (ya i know, another "sister" thing but she is my age so sex in sl isnt something we're new too or embarassed by) and when we got back to our lil sl house to unpack our goodies there were all these new sex toys that really grossed her out. I had her drop them on the groud so i could see who the maker was and it was blank. Dont get me wrong we are clearly old enough to play sexually in sl but to recieve things like C*m in my face* attachment is insulting to many women. Her transaction history show'd nothing nor did her chat history. So if you think ppl are not going around randomly giving ppl gross sexual stuff in a way that cannot be tracked by normal means then you better think again.

As for the money issue, i've had sl short change me many times, even go so far to take out my cash balance when my tier was not due. so this could be a combination of the two.

Either way with all the bugs and hacks going around in sl lately i wouldnt advise leaving your avie unattended.

i would instit that peoples do not post informations suceptible to cause a major havok in the population of SL; we saw the result with copybot

I have logged into the game in the past and it showed a ZERO balance in the upper right ... for the linden balance.

I had to log out and back in a couple times... and the last time .. I cleared cache... and it all came back.

Not sure if all her money is gone or part.... but I am posting this just in case it MAY help.