New Resident Verification

I fail to understand how new users are verified for age when there are no verifications in place. Any yahoo can get a new, free, relatively anonymous email from Yahoo.com, or other places, and use that to sign up, virtually anonymously.

When you had new accounts required to throw money, most people put a value on their account, and treated it appropriately. Now, with no verification required, there seems to be many more misbehaved malcontents and hooligans roaming throughout SL.

My recommendation would be to go back to verifying users by requiring a payment method. Even if you don't actually charge the money, you can run a sort of payment verification like a hotel would, where they confirm a credit card can pay them, without them actually charging the card. In this manner, you've verified that at least you have a viable account out there.

Sure, there are going to be griefers and malcontents and hooligans still attempting to disrupt our second lives, but by requiring some real verification, you will at least have an idea of who the person may be. Also, this would probably keep under-18 out, which is one of your cliams of a rule. Additionally, your current "suspension" is a farce, because with unrestricted accounts, if some hooligan is suspended, like, so what, create another account or three, and continue the hooliganism.

I'm not trying to rant here, I'm trying to make a case for removing the unrestricted access you currently allow.

-Gnash Rambler

I'm not sure you read my thoughts about the open registration process.

We agree that age verification is important for SL residents. I think where we disagree, after three plus years of experience, is that payment information is the best way to verify age so we're looking for better methods.

In the meantime as I described in the blog post, we are identifying those residents who have given us payment information (check their profile under account type) so you know that their account isn't completely anonymous and you can make your own choice about your relationship to them.