Second Life cannot be accessed from this computer.

I've worked in a call center environment all my life, ranging from paging companies, to the world's once-largest ISP (yep ... them), to the cable company. Customer satisfaction is something that plays a key role in everything I do, all day long even though I'm in dispatch now and no longer in technical support.

Every company I worked for, even "them" always focused hard-core on customer service. Especially my cable company -- they blow *all* the other companies I worked for out of the water with regards to customer service.

One very important key factor that wasn't mentioned is that the 800# subscriber pays for the long distance bills to make it a "toll free call." These hold times and lack of customer focus only drives their expendatures up, and not just on the phone bill. Customers lost, criticial exchanges not completed and a plethora of other things.

Also, at the cable company we'd put several up-front messages on the waiting music.

While sitting here routing the field reps tomorrow's job-load all day today, I busted out my headset and I'm redialing every 10 minutes. I swear I've called and held for 10 minutes about 15+ times now. Yep. Not difficult when you have a headset and can just sit there and do your normal work and listen to annoying-as-all-hell music and hear Jack Linden's "wisdom" on the Lindex system.

To be blunt, I don't think anybody is on the phones over there. I think it's a null queue.

oh my effing geeeeeee

I finally got through. Been calling NON STOP since 8am PST until just now (10min till 1pm PST) except for a 1 hour lunch break. Loki Linden answered the phone.

I gave him my name, and these:
Lighty Goodfellow
Janessa Lobo
Star Meadowbrook
mectron Noodle
Hank Gemini

He said "that's sufficient" and "it should be resolved by the time I arrive home" which is in 3.5hrs from now.

Loki was very nice and very professional, I can't hit him on technicalities there. However, he also sounded very unsure of himself, stammered on his words and came off like "yes yes yes yes yes ... been there done that dude, whatever." So I worry that IF this issue is resolved, it might take longer than 3.5hrs.

He told me that the best course of action to get issues like this resolved is to email customer support or call. I explained our obvious frustrations with both of these options and told him about this message thread, and he behaved as if it really didn't matter, that it's still the best way to be handled. He was definatly a long-term "call center employee" instead of your "gung-ho to fix it newbie."

So, while professional and nice, very unsure, very dance-around-the-problem, very stand-off'ish when I voiced concern about customer support and gave me a HUGE feeling of doubt on their ability to fix the problem.

If the issue continues, I'll repeat my activity today and escalate.

oh my god!!!!

Shaun - you are a saviour - i can re-access!!!!!!!

Can't thank you enough for your help dude - and thanks to that guy you called

very grateful guys - just gotta show my appreciation

Glad I could help man. Problem is fixed for me too!

Total Residents: 5,971,577

Logged In Last 60 Days: 1,750,257

Online Now: 0

Hehe. Seems a few people cant access SL atm

You forgot me in your list but I did manage to get on and I have to say it looks beautiful and I'm having no trouble.

Fingers crossed...and I recommend the beautiful new 4th continent! It's a dream.

I didn't intend on forgetting anybody, but he kept saying "that's sufficient" and behaved very put out that I kept listing names.

Interesting, I wonder if that means that there is one glitch affecting as all rather than something peculiar with our PC IDs. I'm surprised you actually got to talk to someone, I really believed they just didn't answer the phones. So far so good today though. Lets see what tomorrow brings.

Thanks for persisting today...you have more patience than I do. I am amazed how frustrated I get with this; I think it is because I enjoy SL so much that it is so annoying to be locked out of it.

Thanks, Shaun, for trying, but I'm still banned. So is Janessa Lobo. Star Meadowbrook is busy renovating her RL house and hasn't had much time for SL, so I don't know if she can get on or not.

Sadly, I work tomorrow, so I won't be able to pound (via telephone) on their door as you did. But I thank you very much for your consideration of me and my friends. You're a true champion.

Having been an admin for a gaming clan that ran our own servers, this sounds like you got caught in a mass IP or a MAC ban by mistake. We'd have cheats and hacks we'd ban from our servers change their IPs to get back in and cause more havoc. So we'd ban a range of IPs or MAC addresses to keep them out. Inevitably some innocent bystanders would get banned as well by mistake.

My guess is they were going after the PN or /b/ guys or some overseas outfit using stolen credit cards or trading child porn or funneling linden dollars to Al Queda or whatever. They did a ban on a range of addresses and yours got caught in the mix. All you need to do in that case is to be able to prove that you're not one of the bad guys and they can lift the ban... if you can get through to them and prove it to their satisfaction of course.

"I didn't intend on forgetting anybody, but he kept saying "that's sufficient" and behaved very put out that I kept listing names." -Shawn

Probably not put out more than it was something he could do much about. They can look for obvious innocent bystanders once they know the ban was a little overreaching, but other than that anyone still banned needs to contact LL themselves and plead their case. It's like a hold for age verification. They aren't going to take Timmy's friend's word for it that he is 19 if they have a reason to believe he's 12. They want to talk to Timmy himself and/or his parents.

I had nothing to do today.


I'm on call 43 with no response.


So far they've recieved about 60 crash reports from me today.


I have friends near their HQ as well. Maybe I should get them door knocking.

Just as soon as a live Linden Lab employee responds with something more than a canned response, I'll be happy to talk to them.

I'm sorry some of you are still having trouble. I gave the names, I wish there was more I could do from there.

If I only worked there or something. >.<

Just an update.

Still banned as of this morning.

I left another voicemail last night before they closed.

My final post on this topic.

It turns out that I was the innocent victim of Linden Lab's anti-fraud measures. In an attempt to stop a bad person from committing fraud on Second Life, my IP address one of many that was swept up in a general anti-fraud measure. They summarily banned our IP addresses.

The short version of my advice is, if you're getting an error like this, calling the billing department might be a solution. Use the main phone number posted and, at the time of this writing, use option #2 on the menu to get to billing. Because the anti-fraud measure was a procedure initiated by billing, they were the ones to clear this up for me.

As of Monday, May 7th, at about 4PM SLT, my IP address was removed from the ban. They also fixed Janessa Lobo and Star Meadowbrook.

Thanks for everyone's support.

Just crashed out of SL (again) which I admit I expected what with my laptop not having a compatible video card, but I've been able to successfully access SL for a few hours at a time over the last few days.

What happens when I attempt to relog? That's right... "Login Failed. Second Life cannot be accessed from this computer. If you feel this is an error, please contact [email]support@secondlife.com[/email]"

The email's been sent (02:00 GMT/18:00 SLT) but after reading this topic I'm not hopeful.

Scorp.

So, now I've gotten this message when I was able to log on (shakily on a wireless connection) over the past few days. If mass-banning of IPs is what SL is doing, it is very poor customer relations to continue to take my tier fee every month from my Credit Card and ban me with no consideration whatsoever.

I sent an email and left a voice mail. I'll tackle them again tomorrow. *sighs*

However, thanks guys, for all the advice, at least I know what the possible problem is.

I'm banned like this as well.

Wouldn't surprise me if this actually was a new feature.

I got the same problem. I have tried calling the past 3 days, and will always get the "sorry, none of our agents seem to be available". I have left voice mails but never get a returned call :/.

*UPDATE*

Well, I finally got a hold of someone last night and he basically told me that they are going to have to investigate why I was banned, and if everything works out ok, I should be getting an email sometime today that I can use my account again. Will keep you updated.

*UPDATE*
I did not recieve the email I was supposed to get and I still get the error.

It is very frustrating I know; but they do seem to eventually figure out you are one of the good guys. So far it has remained fixed for me so I hope it gets fixed soon for you too.

Did you try the billing dept as suggested? I'm wondering if it is because we are using the same router - it assigns a range of IP addresses. Are you using D-Link?

It really is much easier to get through to the billing department (option 2, I think). Also, since it was fraud related, is was the billing department that banned us. Thus, it's the billing department that had to lift the ban.

Dnali, our own routers cannot assign our outside IP addresses. It assigns them for the computers inside our houses, but not our public IP address for the "outside". You get the outside IP address from your ISP and it is *given* to your router, not picked by your router.

No, I suspect these evil-doers are in close-enough numerical poximity that they are including us.

For example, if the bad guy is using IP address 1.2.3.4 and you have 1.2.3.3 or 1.2.3.5, you're banned. (I'm sure they ban a wider range than that.) The reasoning is that, in general, if you ban a range of similar IP addresses, you'll prevent the bad guy from being able to log onto Second Life after getting a new address from their ISP.

Problem is, in today's broadband world, many of us are actually *stuck* with our IP addresses. I tried to get mine changed and was basically told the easiest way to do that is to get a new router, which will have a different internal number (actually called a MAC address, no relation to Apple Macintosh's) and that will force my ISP to create a new profile for me which draws a new IP address from the pool. Oy!

Short story is, on Monday, contact billing and ask them why you can't get on. Be sure to ask in a nice way, even though you're frustrated. Why? First, the person you are speaking to probably had no responsibility in creating this fraud-ban policy and, second, because they probably had nothing to do with actually banning you. But, the *can* be the one to look up your account, find out that you're not really the bad guy, and have your ban lifted in mere minutes.

Good luck to everyone.

Thanks for the info Lighty!

i just started having this problem last night

i try to login but i get the "SL cannot be accessed from this computer" message

i sent a support ticket to LL and they cannot find a problem

i tryed to login on another computer at a friends house and it works
but not at my house

my question is, can your IP address be changed at random without your knowledge?

the reason i asked is because earlier that day i had to re-identify my self
at other sites that i have access to(as if you were logging on from a computer
you never used b4)

if this is true then i may have been assigned a blocked IP number

how can i change my IP number ?(if its possible)