Dissapearing alts.

I just thought of something. My husband has a basic account he created just recently.

Both accounts would be the same IP address, same CC#, but different email addresses.

How can they tell the difference between household accounts?

so what is the accepted limit to the number of accounts. Last I read there was no hard and fast number.

Supposedly there is no limit to paid accounts.

Atashie, My husband and I used different CC's (I think, I haven't checked his recently), but everything else is the same except emails. Difference: We've only the two accounts and both we paid 9.95 for. At the time, the limit was 5 accounts per household. When I checked his account this morning, at his request, his account was still active and just fine.

Edit: I'm baffled as to why there were no emails sent out to customers whose accounts were affected nor even a blog post concerning it. At my old job, we were required to make every effort to contact a customer before we could condemn a VCR.. the final step was a certified letter. It was not just CYA; it was also ethical to do this.

I think they did this because of the farking bots, folks... think about it. Who would really need the overly insane amount of accounts but the botters?

Yup, I've seen that. I have a couple of alts that I created without any problems whatsoever, but *all* of my wife's alts have disappeared exactly as you have described.

So now I have to share my alts with her, since we don't want to run afoul of the PTB.

.

Well I know I'm in trouble...once again "nice guys finish last", (sic)...I have had MANY friends & associates sign up while I had em over for a visit/drink & showed em Second Life. I love helpin 'em set up thier av in "record time"...lil hobby of mine

Looks like I better send out some PMs...guess me and my GF are "safe" since we actually used our Credit Cards unlike some folks though... (?)

So, if I have a premium account and another account with payment info on file and my husband also has an account with payment info on file, all with seperate emails are we at risk? Would we lose all of the land owned by a deleted avatar??

THis is scary.

Very interesting, considering the Knowledge Base says this:
http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/article.php?id=308
How many alts may I have?
Currently, you can create as many additional Basic or Premium accounts as you want to pay for. Previously, we limited accounts to 5 per household and 2 per payment method, but this is no longer the case.

Um, how can they punish people for exceeding the accepted limit, when there IS no accepted limit according to their own documentation, as long as they are all paid for? There is something very wrong going on here. Of course, they reserve the right to close accounts without advance notice for people violating their terms - but when their terms state that people can have as many accounts as they want to pay for, how is this justified?

Hmm, one more thing here. The knowledgebase article goes on to say that:
We do require that alt accounts adhere to all of our policies. For example, by agreeing to our Terms of Service you agree to provide truthful and accurate information about yourself when you register for accounts -- that includes not only your contact information and real name but also whether this is your first free Basic account or a new alt (see TOS section 2.1). People who do not provide truthful information risk losing their accounts.

Are they doing their own little form of identity verification on the back end to make sure you really are who you say you are?

According to the Lindens we've made contact with the limit is again '3 per person, 5 per household' for accounts, but there's been no announcement on this policy and SURPRISE, this thread is being ignored!

Charlotte, have you tried talking to a Linden in-world in his/her office hours? I've never done it so I don't know how crowded it gets, but this is the May Schedule .

Perhaps if everyone emailed support on this issue (I'm going to), they might take notice!

Edit: Email sent.

Thanks, Charlotte, for bringing this to everyone's attention

Edit encore: I received an automated response. Here is the first paragraph. I've italicized one sentence: thought it might make everyone laugh (albeit hollowly).

Dear Second Life Resident:

Thank you for contacting Second Life Technical Support. Your question regarding How many alts may I have? has been received. Inquiries received during working hours will likely receive a very quick response; inquiries received after hours or on the weekend might have a wait a bit longer, probably until the next business day.

I thought we had two or three Lindens patrolling Residents Answers last week?
This issue is of paramount importance for goodness sake.

How many people are going to just meekly start another avatar, buy land to replace lost, rebuild their inventory, start a new group etc in the fear of it all happening again and again?

People are losing real money and a lot of their time. People will leave SecondLife. They will tell their friends to be prepared to lose everything with no warning whatsoever. The longer LL leave this unexplained will accelerate this process.

Don't they see this as important?

Nope.

So... if I have some alts already, how do I delete them myself to ensure that the ones I want to keep, don't get deleted for me?

I can see why they would re-impose this limit, given that database issues are the core problem of the whole show and that they seem to be fighting a running, perpetual battle with malicious codesters inside the system (grey goo, landbots, theft-bots, oh my!). I can also see that age verification may well require the alt system to be massively overhauled, and that any independent 3rd parties being asked to put their reputation on the signup process might require a bit of "cleaning up" in the run-up to implementation.

After all, if the alt/registration database has gotten as busted as the inventroy, texture, and all the other databases, the management may well THINK they are chasing automatically created freebies!

You can log into the SL website and cancel any unused account. I believe they deactivate such an account in a day or so, delete in-world items owned by that account after a month and delete the entire account with all its assets after two months, unless you pay a fee to reactivate.

From the horror stories I've heard, I'm already preparing to lose everything with no warning and suggest others do the same. I don't keep any more money in SL than I need to pay my bills. I was going to expand my business a while back, but the hell with that now. My land is in group ownership so if one of my accounts mysteriously vanishes, I might have a half a chance of being able to get in on a remaining account and sell it so I don't lose it outright.

Do whatever you can to protect your assets folks, because Linden Labs won't do it for you.

cripes. "we reserve the right to move the goalposts," or what? i've got one alt (Object Pascale) and despite momentary panic when I couldn't login as him last night, everything turned out OK in the end. touch wood.

Thanks, I'll have a go.

How can I tell whether people in my friends list have been UnPersoned? Not much point pining over no messages from Billy-jo-jim-bawb Oppenheimer, if they have hit the bit bucket...!

If I took this avi premium she would be safe, right? Then I would have 2 premium accounts. Does anyone do this??

Nimue owns and runs the buisness I am starting. I just don't understand what is happening.

Gummi, I believe friends lists are automatically updated at login as to whether each avatar exists, thereby simply not appearing may mean either they've removed you from their list or they themselves have been 'removed'

Nimue, I've been trying to get my alt premiumed for months .. nobody knows what's happening here At least if and when we get them converted, we should have better protection should we fall foul of this latest ... bug for want of a better word?

Yes, it is perfectly legal to have as many Premium accounts as you like. I doubt they would delete Premium accounts unless they were being abused (excessive use of camping chairs, bots, fraud).

Given that the current, published rules state quite clearly that you can have as many accounts as you wish, so long as you do not abuse them, the Lindens better be ready to show clear evidence of "abuse" if they go around deleting accounts without notice. At the very least, the account should be suspended, and not actually deleted, so there is some chance of reinstating the account long enough to transfer assets to remaining accounts.

I wouldn't worry about an accoiunt being MIA just becaise it is missing from a Friends list, Friends has been screwed up more times than I can count. And as for accounts not showing in Search, that is also the case when an account is merely suspended. So it does not necessarily mean the assets are not retrievable. Assuming you can get some customer service frol LL to fix it, that is.

I told the Lindens to cancel and delete some "test accounts" that were created a while back merely so I could check the current state of the sign-up process. Yet at least one of those still exists, though I no longer recall the password for it and since I only used it briefly and never set a Home location for it, I can't answer the "recover my password" questions... Guess that one will remain in limbo forever...

Not to mention the non-transfer items, which cannot be saved.

How can an alt be legitimate without payment info? It should have "payment info used", because it was paid for...

All my alts are "Payment info on file". My main is "Payment info used", since that is the only one that has ever needed to buy L$, ever. Ceera transfers funds to the others as they need it.

I gave all the required payment info and answered all questions honestly when registering each alt. In some cases, LL's sloppy accounting department never billed me for the alt, and in some cases recently alts were created using LL registration processes that never gave me a CHANCE to offer billing info, short of signing up for a Premium account.

If you create an account now and do not elect to be Premium, you can only enter paymenht info after the account has been fully created. At no point in the registration process do they even ASK if you have other accounts, and at no point do they say that you may have to pay for the new account, unless you click the choice to create a Premium account at registration time. So it is PERFECTLY LEGAL, based on the current registration process provided by LL, to create a "no payment info on file" alt, and pay nothing for it. Because THEY DONT ASK FOR PAYMENT.

Ah! Ceera thank you, I thot I was going insane when I created an alt a bit ago to rescue me from infiinite logout mode. I meant to pay for her, and somehow never got the chance to. It sounds like they perhaps changed the register dialog, fabulous. Well, I certainly hope they delete her and not me, but it sounds from the other posts as if the auto-delete script they're using might just randomly choose one or more alts to delete from an "offending" account, BUMMER. I wonder what her password is ....

Inasmuch that LL can't seem to find my alt in order to enable me to premiumise her, I'm crossing my fingers that they also can't find her to delete!!!