S.T.F.U About Non-Verified Accounts and Griefing !!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't even own a credit card. I'm verified through Paypal which has verified me through my bank account. I think I bought some L one day with my Paypal account and that got me verified through my bank account that's linked to Paypal.

The point is, if I do something bad, LL will be able to ban my account because Paypal is like my ID card that they can ban. I don't know how PaybyCash.com works for those who don't have Paypal available to them but it might also be a way LL would accept for verification.

Mia, becoming verified doesn't mean paying for a Basic account.

Varifacation can be done a dozen ways. Paypal is one of them. Someone suggested a gift credit card. There are so many ways. You can even do it through your ATM card if you have a VISA Or Mastercard check card.

Varifacation, by the means I suggested in the other thread, doesn't mean stopping free accounts at all. Just requiring confirmable information to be submitted and on file with Linden Labs before being able to enter the grid.

Yes, people can counterfiet information. It's done all the time. But that is not an excuse to roll over and let every abusive jerk out there to freely abuse the system and services it provides. People who do identity theft deserve the legal penalties they get.

Linden Labs has a duty to its userbase/customers to make sure the service remains useable. And so far, letting unvarifieds on the system has resulted in sheer insanity. And it is the greatest security hole the grid has. It needs to change. It has to change.

I work for a club in Second Life that is under continual griefer bombardment by griefers who almost exclusively use unvarified accounts. And yes, we are pretty sure the griefers are a result of those who are in competing clubs, who either hire people to do it or do it themselves through unvarifiedf accounts. In either case, the results are the same. Endless, daily bombardment that threatens to drive us all completely insane.

Close off the unvarified access, you end the problems plaguing the club I work for. or at least cut it down to a level where everybody working there isn't being pushed to the brink of homicide.

I would just like to add that I completely agree with your assessment. Especially getting rid of freebie accounts. Sorry guys, but if I pay, you can!

Minimum....scripting or modifying scripts should be restricted to verified accounts only!

hi

eh...ya sure YAY, reopened with scripts disabled, WEEEEeee tons of fun!!!

love paying for this....hmm lemme see, plane fly?? no.... doggy go woof?? Noooo....

lame lame lame. I dont know if I really want to continue paying for something that works like this.

If you arent grown up enough to deal with people voicing there oppinion on a forum then dont read them. Easy as that.

I agree wholeheartedly, Ravyn.

AND...those of us who subsribe (pay to use SL) can decide to NOT pay anymore for YOUR free experience and it all goes byebye, hmmm....

that is a gift card, not a pre paid. end of story

it is my understanding the as far as the merchant is concerned (ie LL) they cannot distinguish a giftcard visa from any other visa.

This is a crosspost, but it fits well here.

I wonder if these attacks might be from some of these people who are complaining so loudly for the removal of free accounts. This makes sense because these people have the motive and requisite anger to abuse free accounts, and stand to gain from the attacks in the form of getting what they want.

Were it not for a free account without payment info I would never have tried SL. As an IT professional I was a bit tentative to give out my credit card info for a service I really knew nothing about. The reason I signed up was for the ability to script and create content, and to this point I have spent approximately 90% of my time in SL building and scripting.

A grey goo attack such as the one I witnessed yesterday only requires one person to start, and that person would not need much knowledge of programming to initiate it, and it shouldn't be incredibly difficult to prevent this sort of attack WITHOUT removing free accounts, or severely crippling building/scripting etc.

Severe reactionary FUD such as witnessed here is completely unnecessary, and I suspect the Lindens realised the benefits/risks of free accounts when they decided to instate them. The important thing to realize is the people who have the knowledge and motivation for these attacks are people who have spent a decent amount of time in SL to start with, and have decided for whatever reason to create a free alternate account to grief. Therefore people shouting complaints are prime suspects.

What does that mean specifically? Are gift cards still accepted by credit card vendors or what?

The way I see it, you don't need to block unverified script usage, just compilation. That means an unverified could run anybody elses script, but they couldn't create their own or modify someone elses. Then the only way to perform an attack using scripts would be to transfer a script from a verified account at which point you have an identifiable human involved.

That would be the lenient option, but it would still allow for abuse by combining seemingly innocent scripts. In that situation a griefer's paying account could simply deny they had any intention for it to be used in that way, but repeat offenders would still be caught (or deterred after they get their first call from the LL legal team.)

nope i can open a false account with a gift card because technically all im "paying" for is the card

for example: You darkness walk into Safeway, or dominicks or Jewels or Piggly wiggly, and walk over to where there is a display of these cards, you see lets say, an AMEX gift card for 50.00, at that point that card is useless until you pay the 50.00, plus fees, you then take said card back log into 2nd life and boom instant"verified" account. although SL will read it as a cc, there is no way to verify the user's info via the card except it was bought at xyz store.

pre paid(at least mine does) requires name, address, ss#, email addy, phone number+cell phone number, etc etc;. as if you are applying for an actual cc with the exception being YOU control you credit limit. and yes it does send me a montly statement, and yes my pre paid customer service calls me to verify any unusual activity on my card. as long as i keep my info current with them its as if i have an actual credit card.

if i missed a point, or confused you in anyway, forgive me i am only on my first pot of coffee.

if i have helped griefers in anyway to just become "verified" pests, feel free to burn me in effigy.

yes they are Zal, however there is no verifyable info on the user.

i say bring back truly verifyable account info. or limit what a non verfied account can do. will it stop the griefing? no will it cut it down to a managable level most definately. yes there was griefing before the non verified accounts. but not at this level. i know there are a lot of good people on nonveris out there(ones my sl daughter) but until, as one poster in another forum post put it, this security hole is closed we can look for more and more of these attacks to happen.

If there is nothing to stop a griefer from spending 10 bucks a pop on accounts, what is keeping other unverified accounts from getting verified besides laziness and the fact they can't scrounge up 10 bucks? I have heard of a small number of people who are in other countries and have various reasons, but.. eh. When I was unemployed and homeless I still had ten bucks to pay for my SL account.

If you're so defensive about it, then you obviously must have some problem with verifying your own account.. right? If not I can't understand why you would be so worried and hotheaded as to post like you did.

Even if a griefer had to pay /only/ 10 bucks per grief name, it gives LL a way to track them down. If the name and info are fraudulent(Have you ever tried to do this? I know I had to show ID when I paid for a prepaid gamecard at Gamestop last week, but that may have been cause I paid for it with trade-ins. ) they'd be commiting an even greater crime (since crashing SL isn't much of a crime in the scheme of things) just so they could crash the sims. Which would be a deterant in and of itself.

Why can't the Lindens just disable llRezObject and llGiveInventory in scripts created by unverified accounts. This way unverified accounts can still adequately use scripted objects, but they can't create potentially troublesome scripts. Any script containing these two functions can then be traced back to a verified source.

If you are committing to Second Life enough to want that level of control over something you are scripting, you are already past the point of casually trying out the platform and should be made to verify either through credit card, SMS message, or through PayPal.

As for prepaid cards and such, I find it extremely unlikely that Visa or Amex or (insert financial institution here) doesn't provide a way for a merchant to differentiate between a regular credit/debit card and a prepaid card.

Why can't the Lindens just disable llRezObject and llGiveInventory in scripts created by unverified accounts. This way unverified accounts can still adequately use scripted objects, but they can't create potentially troublesome scripts. Any script containing these two functions can then be traced back to a verified source.

If you are committing to Second Life enough to want that level of control over something you are scripting, you are already past the point of casually trying out the platform and should be made to verify either through credit card, SMS message, or through PayPal.

As for prepaid cards and such, I find it extremely unlikely that Visa or Amex or (insert financial institution here) doesn't provide a way for a merchant to differentiate between a regular credit/debit card and a prepaid card for exactly the reason of verifiable identification.

Actually you made my point. LL as the people accepting the card for verification cannot tell a giftcard from a prepaid. Therefore verification does absolutely nothing in proving identity.

No Maggie.

I am not talking about a Gift Card.

And I am not talking about the more formalized pre-paid credit card accounts issued by such banks as Orchid. Those are a more formal type of card and are made available only after a process similar to that of obtaining a regular credit card, by formal application. And those pre-paid credit cards work very differently from the new type of pre-paid card I am referring to primarily because they allow for credit up to the amount deposited by the account holder in an interest-bearing account at the issuing bank.

I am talking about obtaining a full - fledged , fully functional, instantly activated, pre-paid Mastercard or Visa account and card at my local drugtore or supermarket. While these cards work just like "credit cards" for purposes of buying things and making payments, they are actually a type of debit card.

It works like this:

Hanging on a rack near the gift cards are cardboard folders containg a temporary Mastercard or Visa card. I take the card to the cash register with my groceries. The card is scanned and I am asked "How Much Do You Want To Put On It?" This can be any amount. I pay the check-out clerk the specified amount plus a service charge. The account then must be activated.

In order to activate the card I must register it online. (You also have the option of registering it through regular snail mail) I could, of course, do this through an anonymous proxy server, preferably one that does not keep logs, so that my IP can not be traced. The only information I have to provide the bank who issues thase cards is: my name; email address (this can be a dummy email account since they never use it to contact you); mailing address (this can also be a phony cause the only thing it is used for is to send you a permanent plastic card that is not in any way different from a regular Mastercard or Visa card. A greifer would of course have no need for this permanent card so he can use a phony address when activating); and a password for the account. THATS IT. No SS #, no bank account info, NADA! The bank has no need for any further identifying informtion since it has your money in hand and is at no risk whatsoever.

After entering this phony info on the issuing bank's website I would immediately have full access to the the funds that I "deposited" at the grocery store check out counter. I access these funds in my now activated account with my temporay card. That card and account will function and be accepted just like any other bank issued card.

For the normal user, when the funds in the account are depleted he/she can deposit new funds into the account by purchasing a reload card at the grocery store. The reload card can be activated over a phone or via the web. The only information that is required is the number of your account and the number on the reload card.

The big difference between these cards and a gift card or even an Amex giftcard is with these there ostensibly is a mailing address and name associated with the acount that LL can ask for and access online, no matter how fake it may be. So when LL checks the account at the time of getting authorization for the payment on the SL account it would have no reason to believe that the information listed was not correct and would believe it had a valid traceable route to the ID of the resident in the event he/she started greifing the grid.

GRID ATTACKS ARE OBVIOUSLY PERPETRATED BY THOSE LOSERS WHO WANT TO DISCREDIT THE UNVERIFIED - THEY DONT WANT TO SHARE THEIR PRECIOUS WORLD...
So pull your heads in and get a grip on reality...

First off, WOW. That must be it. A plot to discredit unverified. There's logic.

The reason people have a problem with unverifieds is that they grief in the first place. That's it. So how does it make sense that griefers are verifieds trying to get rid of...

This is making my head hurt, trying to figure that one out.

Secondly, just a question:

Say I'm a griefer and want to make trouble with an unverified account, but they've instituted the "No Scripting" thing.

What's to stop me from making a goobomb with a verified account, registering an account with a fake name, giving my unverified account the bomb, or doing this through a series of unverified accounts, all using different names, and then setting it off.

Or are you suggesting that unverifieds be completely unable to use scripts at all?

Just curious.

DIsagree 100%, CC verification should be all, I dont have the moey to pay 10 a month or even 10 usd, im on alt because I deleted myo ld account and would have to pay another 10USD just to play this game, even though the griefing wasnt as bad as before, you also had bad lag and bugs and whatn ot do to updates, only thing thath as gotten worse is griefing, but sl still has been pretty bad excluding griefin,g especially texture rezzing and what not

I dunno..Seems to me all this talk about Verified and unverified accounts are a moot point in the Lindens grand scheme of things. sure..Griefers grief..thats what they do..It, for a short time puts undo stress on the servers that forces them to shut down or crash as it were..But..Even working..the unmitigated "Feature creep" that Lindenlab has instituted in order to gloss over the genuine flaws in thier software that are either to "Imbedded" to fix or are just beyond the Linden staffs level of expertise to rectify seems to me to be the major problem. "Goo" attacks have been around for years in SL. Griefers have been around for years as well. Back when the platform was "Less" unstable..This was but an annoyance. Now..Well..Perhaps they will fix it in this round of updates..I will bet my entire linden balance that they won't..what we will see is about 15 "New" features to distract us for an hour or so from the Unfixed broken toys of last week..then the new toys will break..And they will make more new toys..Ad nausem..Perhaps, instead of screeching about the unverifieds to each other..We should SCREEH to the Lindens about actually Rolling this pile of broken cogs back to a slightly simpler time..When everything worked. And then..After actual "Testing" (ie not running it for a week on another server with all of 10 people on it) Rolling the non-buggy features back into the main grid.

Or we could just all stay sitting around here pointing fingers at the "Unverifieds"..I mean..Yeah. that gets a lot accomplished.

For those who say "quit complaining about the griefers, the software is too buggy anyway" ... Does it occur to you that all of the time, manpower and other resources spent fighting the grid attacks could instead be spent making the software better? Get rid of the griefers, and LL can put all of their time and energy into the game.

As to the whining about needing to be "verified" ... Do you think that LL runs Second Life for kicks? It's a company, trying to be profitable. You want full access to all features of SL, yet you don't want to have to verify who you are, let alone pay for it. Go over to EBay and start screaming about not being allowed to bid without creating a verifiable account. Go to any of the larger information provider sites and start complaining about not being able to see the full content without paying.

It's sad. The Internet has spawned a subset of society that wants everything for free.

Personally, I'm very much in favor of the idea of "tiered" access with various levels of restrictions on what a user can and cannot do based on the person's willingness to be verified, and even higher level features available to those willing to pay for such access.