Insurance in SL?

Recently, someone came to me telling me that because of a bug in SL people have been losing their entire parcel. They would hack the parcel and take everything in it, resell the parcel with "no owner" as the owner.

This person has said that they have insurance so that if that happens, you'd not only get the parcel back but everything you've lost. When I ask how he can do this, he told me that he's working with Linden Labs. There are other insurances out there but they are the cheapest.

Now I'm very skeptical to begin with. Just my nature. I haven't heard of any parcel being taken by a bug. I haven't seen LL say anything about it, and I haven't even heard of it until this person who sells the insurance told me about it and tried to sell it to me.

The next day, someone was looking for this guy telling me she lost her parcel. I told her that he has an office on the sim, and minutes after she left, this guy contacted me again.

I'm still skeptical. I just want to get some research done. Is this real or is this a scam?

Thanks.

BTW, on a side note, if this IS true, isn't insurance by definition a random gamble and therefore should be banned by SL?????

Scam!

ETA: If not a scam, then certainly worthy of an AR, since it would mean that a LL staffer should be about to lose his job. LL staff are not allowed to accept payments from residents.

get him to go over it with you again. copy and paste the conversation into an abuse report.

If he's working with Linden Labs, he ought to be able to provide you with a contact person at Linden to confirm it.

There are usability bugs in SL that have, in the past, caused people to offer parcels for sale unintentionally at prices well below market, where they have been gobbled up by landbots. Linden has, to the bet of my knowledge, refused to force landbot owners to return the parcel or pay a market rate.

Insurance normally requires the insurer to have sufficient assets to cover losses. So where is this person getting the funds to reimburse you?

SL insurance? No way that this is anything other than a scam. How could they *possibly* return any no transfer items to you? How can they possibly return a parcel that is probably already sold?

Unless the person's last name is Linden I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot prim, and even then I wouldn't.

The question of insurance depends on your status.

If you just use SL as a hobby or game, no chance.

But if you have a business that is earning a worthwhile first life income, you are declaring it to the revenue and pay tax, and if the business depends in part on unique content, then you do have insurable interest and it can be covered.

I looked at this sometime ago for a SL resident, and had a general chat with a Lloyds of London broker. Loss of profits, public liability, employer liability, and possible loss of unique content, can all be insured. If you are UK based make sure you deal with someone who is FSA authorised.

But wouldn't this be with an RL company, calling them via RL phone and chatting with them?

From the sounds of it, the OP was approached by an avatar in SL and well, given the very typical use of scare tactics, I'd say this particular form of 'insurance' is a scam. It's not for protecting wages, it's for the parcel, which is rather pointless, isn't it?

To clarify my example was a Second Life business making fairly reasonable profits in first life terms, in those circumstances it (the Second Life business) becomes like any other first life business. There is no real distinction if you think about it. After all someone owning 20/30/40 plus sims has put in at least $20,000/$30,000/$40,000 US dollars - and thats without content.

I cannot comment on the person in this thread, I was just saying a business in SL making worthwhile first life profits can obtain insurance like any other business

I have large amounts of land for sale. I'm a representative of Governor Linden and he want to dump some protected land. Contact me at 1-800-IDIOT

jk/dont AR me

scam, besides, Lindens do that for free

Well since no such bug exists as describe the insurance provider has 0% chance of ever paying out.