Bye Bye, Second Life

I wish I didn't have to leave you, but it's not my decision.

After I don't know... a couple of years of milling about and having fun in Second Life, my computer finally died. I don't have a lot of money, so I decided to pick up a used Macbook Pro on Craigslist.

I downloaded and installed the Second Life viewer and tried to log in, to be met immediately by something like "this computer cannot access second life". I asked a few friends what they thought was going on, and one of them suggested that I may have purchased a laptop from someone who'd been "hardware banned" some time before.

It took a long time to find a phone number for Linden Lab. When I called it, I got someone in Ireland who told me that my brand new used Macbook Pro had indeed been banned, and that she needed me to fax in a copy of my driver's license to take the ban off.

I was just about to do it when I realized how ridiculous this is. Why am I guilty until proven innocent? I've had my account for a long time, I have many good friends in Second Life, and I'm prevented from talking to them because Linden Lab thinks I'm some sort of criminal? All they need do is check the records of my account and see that not one complaint has ever been levied against me.

So goodbye, Second Life. It appears I'm a very small part of a huge mass exodus going on right now, and somehow I'm not surprised.

Your account isn't banned.

Your computer is.

They need to make sure that they're talking to you... not to the original owner of the computer who has done something dastardly and stolen your password and account.

That is why you don't mess with Craigs List.

You bought a Mac from an SLer who was banned on that computer it seems.

Call them back and give them a piece of your mind.

Dude, I know it's annoying, but just fax your license. You are innocent until proven guilty; but your computer has already been sentenced. I'd also wipe that sucker in case there is anything else untoward on it.

It is a good thing that LL can hardware-ban the people who do real harm by scamming, stalking, and so forth. You happened to buy a banned computer, and it sounds like you can easily remedy the situation.

LL can't just drop by and see that you are you - they just need some proof in an easy form, and I hope you decide to comply. It wasn't their fault, after all - and not your fault either - just leftover trouble from a long-gone trouble-maker (long-gone we hope, anyway).

Hi, Meester, welcome to the forums. If I had the misfortune to have bought the computer you have, I would quickly try to log into a variety of websites, for example Yahoo, Google, WOW, your bank, etc.. If the previous owner was hardware banned from SL, they may just generally have had bad internet habits.

If it turns out SL is the only problem, then send LL your license. If, however, more sites have banned this device, you may want to consider *coughspoofingyourmacaddresscough*. If you had to junk your previous computer, then use its mac address - each one is unique.

This is commonly done in network labs for testing purposes. Actually, most modern PCs don't really have them in hardware anymore anyway. However, it is ALSO done by scammers and griefers, so while SL would almost certainly not catch you doing this, your ISP might.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, then it would be best not to try it. A local system integrator shop may be able to help you.

Good luck.
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Wipe your system with a fresh install.
Log into all the sites you visited with this bad asses computer and change your passwords IMMEDIATLY. You might well expect to be in possession of the ultimate identity theft tool. DO NOT PLAY GAMES WITH YOUR ID. This persons computer could be loaded with all kinds of key loggers which he's already tagged as legitimate so they'd not show up with any installed scanners.

Ack! Zen is right, I was assuming you'd already wiped the system. Yes, that is the very first step to take.

I would be very upset if i bought a computer that had that problem. But then i thought about the chances of someone buying a random computer and it being banned from SL. It is in the millions. For comparison the odds of being struck by lighting over your lifetime are about 5,000 to 1. So you can't blame people for being skeptical when the odds are so low you have more than a thousand times the chance of being struck by lighting.

As far as your account not having any ARs it could be an alt.

You could be someone who got themselves banned b/c it was found out they weren't an adult and then if someone helped u get around a ban they would be doing something illegal not to mention wrong.

But there are millions of accounts in SL, so it must happen sometime.

Not really since the number of accounts doesn't correspond to the number of banned computers. I have no idea how many computers are banned, but it is probably a couple thousand at most, and more likely only a few hundred.

In order to calculate the probability of this happening you have to divide the number of banned computer into the total number of computers in the World, which reached a billion in 2008. If we assume the number of banned computers to be over 1500 then the chances would be in the hundreds of thousands, but even a 1 in 100,000 chance is really really small. You could reduce that further by only factoring in the number of computers sold in a given year, but the number increases again when we factor in number of computers sold by SL residents compared to the number of computers sold. We would probably end up with a number between 50,000 and 250,000. To be precise we would have to employ the differential equations spelled out in game theory because it involves people making decisions about what to sell and what to buy, but let's settle on 1 in 60,000. You have a 1 in 58,000 chance of dying by legal execution.

Please understand, I'm not saying the person is lying, just that it is very unlikely.

One of my girlfriends got a fake Amber Alert in her e-mail the other day and it had the RL picture of an SL resident. What evil person would put out a fake Amber Alert??? Anywho we're trying to figure out how this happened because it was fwd many times and there's no way anyone on SL could've connected her RL e-mail address with her anyway. No matter how you do the math though it is really really unlikely. I'm convinced there has to be a connection or maybe she's just not telling the truth. Anyway, someone has to win the lottery, and those chances are in the hundreds of thousands, so yeah its got to happen sometime.

Why did u get me going on this? Now my brain hurts LOL!