The real danger of the L$50 Stipend

http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2006/01/the_numbers_gam.html about midway through the main article; search on "Cory" for the impatient.

I think most of the replies here have missed the point of the L$50 stipend. It is to attract customers.

Long ago I decided not to buy anymore software, especially games, if the company did not offer a demo. My bookcase is filled with software that had great cover art and no substance or that I did not enjoy. When I first stumbled upon Second Life, I was intrigued by the web site. When I found out that I could join for free and get L$50 per week for just signing in, I figured I had nothing to loose.

Very quickly it became apparent to me that L$50 would not go far. Now, 3 months later, I still have a free account but by choice rather than for economic reasons. I stuff way more than my normal premium membership monthly charge into my SL account to spend in SL. Heck it would take almost a years worth of stipend to pay 1 months rent.

The Lindens free account/stipend program attacks consumers. Consumers spend and the sellers make money. When sellers make money the economy grows. Simple economics.

So for my 2c, the stipend should stay just the way it is.

Well maybe after a few months stipends should be cut off unless you have bought some money from the lindex, or you've been transfered some L$, or something to show that you're actually becoming a part of the economy

I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. I'm not talking about the risk of prosecution, I'm talking about the risk to the data they paid money for that they will want to use for more profitable scams.

If someone has a list of "10,000 stolen credit card numbers", they've probably got a few thousand good ones, and a few thousand bad ones that have already been used, detected, and locked or terminated. A list of good, verified, 100% scammable cards? That's going to cost you a lot more than you can get back by gold farming.

So when someone starts running their script to create the accounts for farming, Linden Labs is going to see a whole series of bad cards coming in, all from the same IP address, with good ones mixed in.

And they have to give LL a real account with a real CC# or a verified Paypal account with a real bank account to get their farmed money back out of LindeX.

So now they've let LL and thus eventually, if this becomes a real problem, the CC companies and credit bureaux, know a whole new bunch of numbers to watch for fraud. Which means they *can't* turn around and use the cards for other more profitable fraud.
But the chance of getting caught is low enough that the reward-risk ratio is plenty high enough for it to be common. The chance of getting caught farming freebie accounts is much higher, because you have to do so much of it to get enough benefit to make it worth your time, and the company you're scamming is watching the whole thing.

Re: above

1) Even a very modest retail store has a database with tens of thousands of validated credit cards. For that matter, even a diligent waiter can probably get two dozen valid credit card numbers a day.

And honest customers issue 'bad' credit cards all the time: they mistype the number, have maxed it out, didn't pay the bill &c.

Credit card companies don't really 'watch for blocks of numbers' either. Six months ago a business visa of mine was hit once for 15 USD. Visa didn't even blink. They simply reversed charges.

A google search revealed that this company was defrauding thousands of cards for 15 USD each. Was my card flagged in any way? Not at all. I discussed this with them at length.


2) As for everything coming from one IP address - spoofing that is ridiculously easy.


3) $L do not have to be moved through Lindex at all.

In a Second Life full of schemers and innocent people, you'll find plenty willing to paypal money to a stranger for a 'better than Lindex' rate.


Just as you say, the Company *was* quite aware of the farming. Likely they know of a lot more going on than even we might guess. Is it worth the effort of investigating, locating and prosecuting anyone? Probably not.




Anyway. I don't bring all this up to be combative; it is merely reflective of personal experience with credit card transactions. Please forgive if I do not get into 'real life' details (and no, I'm not a scammer, I simply do not wish to reveal my location / occupation to the forum).

While you may be quite rational yourself, criminals are rarely all that rational.

For as they say: crime does pay, but it doesn't pay well enough.

the truth is here.

Well, I really don't want to join this discussion, as I understand too little of those things, and even if I did, my English would probably not be good enough to express it.

But that noteable population rise in January might be because of an article about Anshe Chung on the large German newsmagazine-website spiegel-online.de.

That might actually have driven a couple of germans here, as it did myself. Why the demand for L$ is falling, I do not know, though...maybe us Germans are just a bit stingy...

Greeting
Flood

Greetings, from a fellow German. I actually posted about the article on the forums. Found it not too exciting but rather well done.

While I am sure the SPIEGEL article drove some new users over here, I very much doubt that it made a big dent. The growth rate of SL has been fairly stable for a while. It is running between 10% - 20% a month - which people obviously can't believe to be true.

Hey, I am one of those "free accounts" and I am "online in game" all the time!!!

I also work hard for my $L's and really do not need that $50L you speak about, but there are those who do. Although I totally agree with you on the 'let's make another AV' syndrome...but what I do think you should focus on is why.

Most of the alt AV's I see don't make them for the measly $50L, but to gather first land at $512L and sell it for a higher price.

I on the other hand do not have an alt AV, nor do I want one. It's hard enough keeping up with the one I have...LOL!

So, did I blow your stereotype of the 'free account' AV's...I surely hope so!!

Umm, if they were an alt account and were doing so for the benefit of 512L$ land, then they'd have to be a premium account and they'd not be getting the 50L$ stipend anyway but rather the 500L$ premium stipend instead.

So, what exactly is your point?

you are absolutely right about the Premium Account...back to the drawing board!

A way to guage the number of active accounts vs inactive (maybe farmed, heck, who knows) accounts is to scroll through profiles. I picked a random name and did this, Rune, and it looked like roughly half of the Runes were not very invested in the world, judging from their profiles (no pics, picks, profile language, interests, skills, nada). It's not the same as evidence, but it does give one a sense of the nature of the player landscape. try it out and see what you find.

Hah! Beating the poor just isn't as much exercise as it was in the 80s.

Not that ANYONE in SL is truly poor, given they've got at least a fairly snazzy computer and a broadband connection.