Land Auction Abuse

You won at 1US$ while others did also bid? That is quite a contradiction don't you think? If others did indeed see the 1US$ auction and bid on it it should've gone for more than 1US$.

WHY must it appear in the list? Why must YOU have access to a deal for a deal to be on the table? If I want to sell my car to someone, am I required to ask YOU if you'd like to buy it first? WHY is it such a leap of faith to assume that an offer is on the table when you ask a Linden and are told that it is?

Maybe I can help here.

Scenario (1) is that the people at Linden made an error of some kind with the auction process. This can also happen in my real life business (i.e the Stock Market and Financial Advice)

Lets say a market maker sold a number of shares at above or below the volume weighted moving average. Lots of people have the ability to profit from it, and do by either selling short or long.

That’s tough for the market maker, it is called "a fat finger mistake" and I am afraid they have to live with it including any financial loss. To attempt to un-stitch it becomes progressively more unfair the further up the supply chain you move

Scenario (2) is called a hack or fraud. That is when someone finds a way to influence the price of a traded share by non-legal means. I will not go into how it can be done for obvious reasons.

In that situation you take legal action against the initiator BUT allow or honour second and ongoing transactions resulting from that fraud providing you are satisfied the individuals acted in good faith and were not related to the initiator.
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So in this case the legal precedents are clear, both in the UK or US. Linden Labs will have to establish if the error was theirs or not. If it was they have to honour it or risk legal action OR if they can prove fraud they take what ever action they deem appropriate against the initiator, but allow/honour related transaction if it is a true "third party" transaction with no connection.

Trust this hurried post makes the situation clear in my own opinion

I agree. If I intend to sell a parcel in-world for L$8000 but accidentally enter L$800, that's tough luck for me! I've quoted the price, a buyer has accepted it, and I must honor that price. Linden Lab would not be banning him for buying my land.

In my opinion, the high road would be for Linden Lab to honor the transactions and learn from the mistake. We all make mistakes, and that's ok. They shouldn't give themselves a free pass on mistakes in an area where they provide none for others, though. It doesn't inspire confidence.

Shaun, the auctions are an established system in which the process, procedures, ... are embedded. You are also putting yourself into the wrong position. You're putting yourself in LL's position who have by their actions clearly indicated they did not want to sell for 1US$. This makes your example pointless. I'm also pretty sure LL's employees are quite limited in what they can speek authoritive on. Given the command of English those that complain have it wouldn't be amazing if Adam did not understand them correctly or they did not understand Adam correctly.

In court LL only needs to establish that within their auctioning system a running auction is defined by it being published on the website. If you'd ask any outside expert to analyse the system they will conclude that an auction is only running when it's listed as LL offers no interface for you to buy anything except for that. Altering URL's because they are human readable and interpretable does not constitute an interface and does not give you the right to alter it to your needs. You're not likely to end up in court if you only alter an URL to see whether you can do things you are not supposed to but you'll end up there if you abuse what you've found.

Many hacks related to identity theft use the same methods. There've been a lot of cases where altering ID's in URL's reveals cerditcard information, personal identification information, ...

As long as the system does not push you towards altering the ID's during common use you'll be in the wrong if you do and gain substantial benefits.

True but any buyer using the system would've had the same chance at buying it and whomever bought it did not do anything specific himself to get the unfair advantage.

They may not have understood. Adam may not have understood. The sky may be green. What do these three statements have in common?



But it WAS publihed on the website, and available to the entire world. It's not as if they hacked into a server or something. All the buyer (aparently) had to do was enter the correct URL to access that perticular page. The fact that this page wasn't linked to on another page doesn't hold a lot of water. The page was there and not protected in any way. It was a public page, published on the web site. The end.



Now you're starting to worry me. Do you know if someone besides me can access my Second Life account page? Would you consider LL's website, generally speaking, to be insecure?

You're right. The disadvantage in this scenerio was mine. I had no opportunity to rectify my mistake.

It is clearly stated that the auctions must be published on the "Second Life Auction House" to buy(http://secondlife.com/auctions/faq.php) , and i suggest the robbers on the forums to find a VERY GOOD lawyer, noone can save them. This is ILLEGAL and all know this, or will understand.

Good point

This is Marc Woebegone. I've done nothing but buy by the regular auction method. I contacted Linden about this before bidding on one, and there was no objection. In my biding I went up to $300., and entered $450. I may have even paid more.

It's not a "hack" to use their URLs. They provide the auction id number, and the methodology for bidding. And, they see it happening as it happens, as they post to the closed auction page, and during bidding, they're aware of what auctions are live. In fact, some purple squares were not allowed to be biid on at all; hence, someone at Linden made a decision to make some these sims accessible to bid, and some not.

In any event, a contract is a contract. I paid the 300, upped tier, and they accepted it. And again, I asked about it before I got involved. And the number of people invovled was increasing quickly; hence, normal market conditions were taking over; as they should. Their language tells me i'm bound when I do that, bid on their contract.

So, if my account is not opened today, I'm suing them. Simple. And I'm contacting the credit card company to charge backthe previous billings; I have about $5,000US in my account from selling land and other things, land I paid $1,000 for, or less on smalller parcels, etc., and still holding about 4 sims (bought in the original auction process for those of you that don't think Linden created this system for the alternate auctions). They're refusing to let me withdraw those funds. I belive that's not only a fraud, breach of contract, but it's also theft by deception. Offering the sims for sale to an auction, not objecting to the process when informed abot it, watching it, and then keeping the money they received. Oh, and I did get an email from Jack Linden saying I'd get my money. But it hasn't happened.... yet.

I told them I'd waiit to 8 a.m. EST for them to resolve this, and then I'm defending my rights. See, SL or not, there is a real law out there to protect consumers, and I intend to exercise it. After all, not only did I not receive the courtesy of ao phone call or email about the account being deleted, but when I tried to contact them and their attorney, they refused to speak to me. So they can tell their story to a judge.

MARC WOEBEGONE

If LL decides to suspend you, you can't access USD funds on your account? wow.

It was not published as such as it was generated dynamicly. By giving the script input it did not expect a database query was triggered and a result was given that was beneficial to the person that was trying to exploit the scripts. Whether the page was not properly protected against this does not matter. I can't steal from your house if your door is not locked, I can't steal your car if you leave the keys, ... There are endless cases in which the lack of proper protection does not make an illegal activity legal.



Shaun, I haven't tested LL's website on security because there are legal boundaries I do not pass. Ethical hacking is frowned upon in most cases. Companies like LL are better at protecting their customers than they are at protecting themself though. So in general I would not call LL's site insecure when it comes to customer data. I would've never signed up if I did. I think it's as secure as most other internet sides so there's not much to worry about (or a lot depending on how much you trust the average internet site )

Nevertheless when I look at SL as a whole my assumption is they have no real security team in place. If they had one you'd see security awareness everywhere. For example when it comes to grid protection their current way of working is rather weak. I personally don't get why they haven't build in a few hooks that allow them to trace and destroy items rapidly. In my opinion cleaning the grid should never take much more than a few minutes simply because the grid should be able to do it in a distributed fashion and hence has immensive computing power when it comes to battling abuse. Obviously this is because nobody wondered about abuse in time and now they are stuck with less than ideal tools.

*Yawns* I just woke up, so if I'm 1/2 idiotic, sorry. I don't think it's entirely the bidder's fault, there was a messed up system in place which allowed them to bid. I do think there should have been something in the system to flag when an auction is at this price and freezes it. In a way, they did buy them fairly, and in another way they did not, I'm not sure what I would do if I were LL.

Now do you all tell me they did this while thinking: "this is a normal way of auctioning"?
They were very well avare of they were doing an illegal act. They were taking advantage of a bug. It is clearly stated that the auctions to be bid must be at SL Auction Store.
Noone can tell me: "if you find a way to use the withdraw command of a bank's computer system you can withdraw how much you want.And this is legal."
The fact is that these sims were not auctioned. Because:
http://secondlife.com/auctions/faq.php
"Where are the auctions located?
The auctions are located at the Second Life Auction House. "

"Where else can I see the parcels about to be auctioned?
When you are in Second Life, you can click on the "Find" button, select "Land Sales", check the "Auction" box and select "Search". You can also see land for auction by clicking on the "Map" button and selecting "Land for Sale". The land set up for auction appears as light blue. The map includes land that is planned for auction as well as those parcels currently on the block."

They robbed LL, let them go to court, they will find themselves in a jail. This is not a joke, this is a total robbery let the court to decide this.

How does "Maximum Bid" work?
When you enter a bid significantly higher than the current high bid, then the system will automatically bid for you up to the point of your maximum bid. This makes it less necessary to be online at the time the auction ends. The amount of the bid will be the minimum needed to outbid competing bidders. For example, if the current high bid is US$50, and you bid US$100, then a bid of $51will be automatically placed for you. If someone else bids US$75, then a bid of $US76 will be placed for you - and so on. If someone bids $101, then an email will be generated to you that you have been outbid.

Where else can I see the parcels about to be auctioned?
When you are in Second Life, you can click on the "Find" button, select "Land Sales", check the "Auction" box and select "Search". You can also see land for auction by clicking on the "Map" button and selecting "Land for Sale". The land set up for auction appears as light blue. The map includes land that is planned for auction as well as those parcels currently on the block.

What else should I know?
Before submitting a bid, please remember that you automatically enter into a legally binding contract to purchase the item from the seller if you win the auction.

What if no one bids on a parcel?
The land will be released as public land and residents may purchase as much as they like at L$1 per meter.

How will I know when I can take possession of the land?
Unless there is a problem with billing, winners of auctions may take possession of their land immediately.

What happens if the winner doesn't pay for the parcel?
The second highest bidder has the option of buying it for their highest bid. If the second bidder refuses the option, then the parcel will be auctioned again.

I quoted it for you... It says the auctions can be seen on the web page, but also that the auction land is in blue (purple on my computer) on the Map, and you can find it that way too. When you look at it, go there, it says Auction and has an ID number associated with it.

Others find it this way too... Linden leads you to the Map and tells you to find them that way; and they give you the information; and when I contacted them about it, they didn't object to it, before I bid $450.00... and apparently, you or someone else, in March, 2006, contacted them about it before, and they didn't object.

Marc Woebegone

Marc,

quite a few of the things you are using as justification won't hold:
* It's not a "hack" to use their URLs
-> if you altered the ID they did not generate the URL, you did and did so in attempt to bypass an established system.
* They provide the auction id number
-> Yes and no, they provide the number under which it will be auctioned or is on auction, you are required to check the list of available auctions to determin whether it's up or not. You can debate semantics on that but they'll win as the final say is what was on the auction page as that how the system is intended to be used.
* And, they see it happening as it happens, as they post to the closed auction page
-> Who's they? I assume the system posts this automaticly once the timer, that was triggered after the first bid, runs out. Even if there's human interaction involved, an oversight doesn't disallow them to investigate how you could do it in the first place.
* In fact, some purple squares were not allowed to be biid on at all; hence, someone at Linden made a decision to make some these sims accessible to bid, and some not.
-> says who, it could be a bug in the system (for example because it was up for auction before)

Face it. All who were over these auctions knew they were doing something that was out of the ordinary. There was no reason to believe LL was doing this willingly. There's no reason to make a ton of excuses. Whomever believes that it's legal to alter URL's to get an unfair advantage over those people using the established system should go to court with it. All other excuses won't matter anyway. If LL goes to court they should clearly center on the part that is abuse. They've no reasons to counter the excuses as excuses are irrelevant. They need to focus on the illegal part and get their win.

The best way out of this is for those who have won those auctions to come clean and cooperate with LL in order to clean up the mess. Few companies are impressed if you threaten them with legal action and I doubt LL will be different.

Marc,

why quote so much just for those lines? Maybe if you had only quoted the relevant part you would've understood that this is something that will be used AGAINST you.

It clearly states: "The map includes land that is planned for auction as well as those parcels currently on the block."

This one sentence can be used by LL to prove that you must consult the auction list. As that line implies that land may be colored as "set up for auction" even before it is really on auction.

It seemed to me that when I contacted them and they didn't object, and spoke to others that had learned this alternate auction process, that Linden had decided to level the playing field and let general market conditions take over the price of land.

I bid $450.00 and got it for 300. If you had been there, and anshe, etc., as was starting to happen, the price would have equalized somewhere and continued to rise. The first in, just like t he first in the game, generallly get an economic benefit. It's just like that in the real world. I buy a property in a market thath's not yet discoverd, I generally make more than the guy who buys it later.

And the ability to do this was not only publicly available to everybody, but Linden directs you to the map for blue squares, and some of them are listed on the web page, some could be bid by starting the auction, and others could not be bid at all. Apparently, somone at linden made selective choices about what they were going to allow to be bid, how and when.

And there's the subsequent posting on the closed auction page. Come on, I've seen these go through for weeks before contacting them and then deciding to figure out how their alternate auction process worked. If they had said, hey, it's not meant to be that way, ok., but they didn't. In faact, in their auction bidding process page they talk about winning bids in the $50 range.

And lastly, if it's true that it's not a linden set up to experiment with us, and they made an honest mistake, then they shoud have contacted those involved and discussed it rather than just freezing everybody all of a sudden and pretending they didn't know* this was happening. Same rules should apply to everybody.

I mean look at Anshe, no offense intended Anshe, but she / he buys sims, doens't pay or claim them anywhere within the guidelines, and continues to be allowed to function. Gimchi at this point in time for example....

Marc Woebegone

I don't read it that way Blakar. It says planned for auction. You go there and start the auction. There are others that are blue, where you cant start the auction. My read is that someone at Linden created three possibilities with these blue squares:

1. They start the auction;
2. You start the auction;
3. No auction can be started.

Anyway, I've wasted way too much time on this issue. I want my money back from them and I intend to get it.

I wish you all the best in the future.....

Marc

It's fine for you if you read it that way but they wrote it and hence their interpretation is the most easy to defend in court.

This is quite clearly an exploit.

The only way in which you are "supposed" to access a website is by accessing an approved landing page via a link which the provider has given to you, or to a search engine, and then following links included in those pages.

Gaining any benefit by manually creating URLs - especially to active scripts - is a documented form of hacking attack, and a clear exploit.

The argument that "LL could have stopped it" is moot. That's like saying that if you broke into a house through an open window, you can't be charged with burglary, because it was the householder's fault they left the window open.

And yes, they should be made to pay the money or return the land. If they don't, then LL haven't recovered their startup costs for the hardware for those sims, so they will come out of everyone else's tier and premium memberships. Just to put that in perspective, for each sim that was exploited, it will take 10 people's Premium membership fees for a year to put LL back to what they would have recieved without the exploit. How would you feel about paying your land fees, not to keep SL and your own land online, but to subsidise someone else - who might be your competitor - to have a sim for US$2?

Just because you're bound doesn't mean that they are.

In almost all cases when you order something on a website, you're not starting a contract, you're just placing an offer on the table to enter a contract at that price, together with a statement that you have no interest in negotiating any of the other terms. At no point does that mean the supplier has to accept the contract.

There is legal precedent in just about all countries, (AFAIK but IANAL) that if a web store sells a product at a wrongly cheap price, it need not be provided.