I Lost All My Money In A Scam!

A guy named Snoopdogg Cult placed a box that said click me for a great opportunity. I became interested and decided to look into it. I clicked the box and it gave me a notecard that said to rez the object given to me and then click it for the opportunity. I clicked it and it took all of my money except for 42L. I am very appauled and thought everyone should know about this.

File an abuse report

I did and i wiull everyday until i get back what i earned!

Might want to edit out the names, the mods will do it for you sooner or later..

Its a lesson everyone has to learn, don't rez things given to you by people you don't know or trust.. And DEFINATLY don't give it debit permissions.. Unfortunatly you learned the hard way..

File an abuse report, thats all you can do, filing multiple abuse reports won't help and will probably slow the process down..

Sounds like it was an opportunity for snoopdogg to steal your money. I would call LL on the telephone everyday until this is resolved. Since L$ = RL $ I would consider this a very big deal. Good luck.

Great Idea!

Can an object you rez take your money or otherwise hurt you/your av/your inventory/your L$ balance if you do not give it debit permissions? I don't know very much about LSL or what it's capable of...

To take your money you need to give it permission - a dialog box appears in the corner of the screen asking if you will give it permission.

HOWEVER - it's pretty much at a glance the same format as something asking if it can animate your avatar - I can imagine someone not paying too much attention mistaking it and accidentally hitting 'yes'.

No scripting call can tell you the amount in your account - however - you could repeatedly withdraw an arbitary amount, and it would fail when it couldn't take it.. run in a loop.

The victim would also get some horrid 'dialog spam' from this.

This isn't the first time that names been mentioned either - I would say AR him - and his days in SL are probably numbered.

Let's just put this in big, bold letters...



So, basically the OP rezzed a box from someone they don't know, containg a script that did god-knows-what and asked for debit permission, and is now upset that their currency balance has been drained. Is that correct?

A popup yes/no dialog box for debit permissions seems a wildly bad idea.

Some sort of list that you had to go out of your way to find and give the script permission through would seem safer. I guess you would have to add it again if it gets rerezzed, but you might have to do that now anyway.

It really should not be possible to stumble into giving something permission to drain your account.

Indeed, it is, however, it is not the most friendly of interfaces.

Naive move by the OP, but it is also the UI equivalent of a button in your car labelled "REPO" that gives you no guidance at all as to what the implications might be and then disappears when you press it.

PERMISSION_DEBIT is perhaps the most serious choice you can make in SL and you get a confirmation box that is virtually identical to "Wanna Dance?". Where's the red triangle with a bang in it? Where's the "this will allow the scripted object to take all of your L$, would you be unhappy if you were broke in 3 seconds?"

Not that I expect LL to blow any effort on improving that aspect of the UI. I mean, hey, chat bubbles!

Yep. I've seen a script like this one in action - this script has not been released.. BUT it not only takes the money, it hogties you too

Of course, you do have to give it permissions of all sorts, like 6 animate avatars, then the take your money, then another animate avatar dialog box... by the time you get to the 3rd dialog box... you don't read it anymore. Of course, you don't really read them if you are testing this with a friend... and the friend tells you to write down the amount of money you have so he can give you your money back...

What do you guys mean when you say "rez the object"? I'ver not been on SL long, but the only context people have used the term "rez" with me so far is when they talk about waiting for the surrounding area and people, or your own avatar, to fully appear. They say "I'm still waiting for things/my avatar to fully rez." (or rezz) .. I assume the term originally comes (in some small way) from the movie "Tron". Heh.

When you rez an object, you are taking an object out of your inventory. When you are waiting for things to rez... you are waiting for objects to show up... errrr something like that

And I think "rez" did come from Tron...

Actually I think mentioning a name in a case like this might be a good thing. If someone said "Hey dont trust this guy", um, which guy? For something like this it's preventing others from making the same mistake of taking what this person mentioned in the OP gives you. Who knows how long it'll take for LL to take care of.

And now I'm wondering... can the text on dialog boxes be changed? So that the OP saw something else?

You are right, true claims of "I have been scammed by the Avatar Named Joe Foo" are disallowed as much as "Joe Foo is a doodie-head". This is a policy of the Lindens to protect themselves from having to verify Joe is indeed a scammer because that takes effort. This is a silly and self-serving approach.

I doubt that someone could mangle the message, but as Joy noted above, present them with enough blue boxes in rapid succession, and they get confused.

Ironically, they have added warnings to warn you that you are about to be "scammed" by their own design defects, as in this snippet from SecondLife/app_settings/alerts.xml:

<alert label="BusyModePay">
	<message>		
	"You are in Busy Mode, which means you will not"
	"receive any items offered in exchange for"
	"this payment."
	" "
	"Would you like to leave Busy Mode before"
	"completing this transaction?"
	</message>

or even to keep themselves from accidentally erasing an account:

<alert label="ExpungeUser">
	<message>
	 "Enter the agent id of a user to expunge"
	</message>
	<editline></editline>
	<option>OK</option>
	<option>Cancel</option>
</alert>

So they are capable of doing so, they just haven't thought this worthy.

Incidentally, "rez" was borrowed from Tron and it is used to mean both a) the world being visually constructed around you and b) instantiating an item from your inventory into the world.

True, but all the same its agaist the forum guidelines we have to abide to to post.. It will be edited by a mod sooner or later..

I was recently present when a friend was robbed by an AV pulling a similar scam. I named the AV in question because I strongly feel that the public must be warned of such criminals preying on residents.
There was absolutely no possibility of an error being made and an innocent AV being named - I too had a copy of the offending object, and copies of the chat log in which the AV taunted my friend and admitted his guilt (and he's since become an 'unperson' too!).
I firmly believe that LL policy in these matters is completely incorrect and thoroughly irresponsible.

Criminal AVs should be named in the forums as quickly as possible for the general good. Where investigation of the AR proves the case - fair enough.
Where the accusation proves to be maliciously false - ban the accuser.
In cases of a mistake being made - a warning and/or short ban.

Thus people would be deterred from making malicious accusations. Made to think twice before making reckless accusations. And able to alert others to active criminals in SL.

LLs current policy in this situation represents a major failure in their duty of care to their customers - TOS notwithstanding!

i think i already mentioned this person doing a scam using the linden labs name and claiming to be collecting for charity - i did file an abuse form and even sent an email to copyright infringement as he used the linden labs name

Just like in RL- if you make a prank call to the police or 911, you're in trouble just as if you were commiting a crime.

For the most part, People in SL are decent. There will always be one or two in it for the scams.

Does this not assume that the the "guidelines" are rules and that they are also good and correct?

I don't think either of those propositions obtains.

has anyone thought this might be a hoak?

Can they show the object?

Won't the owner show up in both in the object and payment summary?

Is there any way in SL to lose money JUST by clicking.

Is there any way to get a "permmision to pay" by touching instead of right-click pay?

Its a pretty simple script, Blue...

The Pseudocode:

On_Rez:
-Get Permission_Debit
-Set Timer Event (0.1)

Timer:

llGiveMoney(KeyID of Scammer, integer Amount)


Increment (integer Amount) by powers of two... and I can see where an account could be rapidly depleted. Since there is no Time Delay built into llGiveMoney, this operation can happen rather quickly too.

Once permission is given with the popup message, the only way to kill it would be to de-rez the object, or kill the script.

One can create a prim which when touched requests PERMISSION_DEBIT. If the user says "yes", that script can eat all their L$ in seconds.

You do have to say yes to the dialog, though, which looks like the attached.

Which is not blindingly different from this: