my land was stolen

i have been unable to get into secondlife for any length of time for the past month or so because i blew up my desktop and i am left with a laptop whos processor cannot cope with the game it crashes all the time.
i had 1024 land which, before my pc issues, i sold half to my (now ex) SL partner, so that i wouldnt incur the higher land tier, last night he went into SL and tried to sell my land to a friend of mine so that he could then sell it to me when i got myself back onto SL, but during the process, which i knew nothing about it happening until now, the land was stolen and i am now left with 512...how and why can people get away with this? my ex SL partner is quite new in SL and therefore probably never realised that this could/would happen, i am sure he never did it on purpose...

how can i report this and how can i get it back? i cannot even get in to find out who stole my land.

please can someone advise?

Your friend probably screwed up and set it for sale to anyone instead of specifically to your other mutual friend, then clicked ok on the "ARE YOU SURE??????" dialogs that follow, then someone swooped in and bought it. It's unfortunate, but nobody stole anything. Best you can hope for is to have some friend in SL find out who owns it now, and ask nicely if they will sell it back to you.

Sounds like a bot detected that you had your land up for sale to sell it to your friend. In that case ppl can buy in a sec. I'm afraid LL won't do anything because, however sickening this is, the "sale" was legal.

But these things suck bigtime, LL get rid of those bots!

Mandy C

Hiyas Poppytat! I'm sorry to hear about what happened. Unfortunately these kind of things happen frequently especially with the new automated land-buying process ushered in with the arrival of landbots. Sadly there is very little that can be done beyond appealing to the bot runner who snapped up your land.... providing it hasn't already been sold on to another land flipper.

Sounds exactly like what happened on this thread: /327/21/178119/1.html

You might read up over there to see the extensive discussion about what Linden Labs does about these things - which is nothing. They don't get involved in private land disputes between residents.

I'd like to add: you may want to visit this proposal and tell your story to lend your support to revisions in the land sales process to save others from going through what you've suffered:
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-431

Sorry to hear of your loss. But since this was a legal land sale, you have little recourse in this situation outside of trying to get the land back from whoever bought it.

Just a small niggle
The search would have listed the land as for sale to anyone, rather than to the friend. If it was for sale only to the friend, the bot would never have arrived. They also don't detect anything, they merely use the search tools provided by LL. Theoretically, it possible that a human could have turned up to buy it.

@Poppytat: it's unfortunate, but it isn't "stealing". Somebody set the land for sale to anyone, it was sold to anyone. There is nobody to report it to, but luckily some bot owners are actually willing to hand back land if you get in contact with them.
The only thing that can be done to prevent it happening again is to make sure everyone reads the relevant knowledgebase articles, and support the JIRA proposal or make your own.

heh bots are just way to fast

They do need to fix this as humans make boo boos and dont learn by osmosis diffusion. At one point in time it was possible to make a mistake and have time to correct it. Now its not.


Yeah even with those pop ups its possible to make errors if your tired or whatever.


Find out who bought the land out from under you and ask them please can you have it back. Bots simply should not be buying land for 1L or whatever.

For future referance though (this wont help now..) you can sell your land to a particular person instead of clicking the sell to anyone button

(not much help now I know)

There's a proposal on Jira by Tristan addressing this very issue .. but how the heck does one vote on it? I can't see a button!

That's because you hobbits are too small to see it.

Mandy C

Before the appologigists show up

I agree with Wilhelm. A responsible bot owner wouldnt have his/her bot designed to buy land for 1L.

Just as a responsible manually controlled land baron wouldnt go trying to swoop 1L parcels.

I am aware of no one in my 2 years in Second Life wanted rid of their land so bad they put it on the open market for 1 Linden so just anyone would show up and buy it.


Okay -
Is the land selling process especially redundant? yes.
Is it reasonbly idiot proof? No.

Obviously not. Or we wouldnt get one of these threads every day.

So the land selling process is one of those "nice try, but see if you can do better" deals in my opinion.

Please remember, many customers lack extensive knowledge of English. They Lack substantial familarity with computer based tools.

And they lack a knowledge Landbots even exist. I never heard of them till I started reading the forums again, and People who know me would say im fairly well informed.

You need to log in to the JIRA (using your normal SL name/password). Then refresh the page and you'll see a 'vote' option on the bottom left of of the left-hand panel.

Thanks Valentino, I did log in yesterday but mebbe didn't refresh the page

Agreed. And LL already has protections in place for selling land for $0, so that it doesn't get "stolen". It would be so simple for LL to make it work the same way for sales of $1.

*sighs* i see so many topics about that on these forums. LL has added the ability to only sell the land to 1 person by their name, yet people don't bother using that feature. It's obvious we need something else. Possibly a button on the about land window that says (GIVE LAND TO PERSON), and when you click it, it asks you for a name. When you submit a name, it asks that person if they wish to accept it. Hey I'm just passing ideas hehe.

They could simply not list any parcel thats for sale for less than $100L .

Give person land is already built-in. If you set the sell price to 0L the system REQUIRES that you specify a avatar name to sell to.

With the thing already handling sales at 0L$ in a way that requires giving a name, why would it need extending to cover sales at any other price, whether 1L$ or 100?

Say the price is set at 100, there will be threads where people have set the price to 101 and had the land snatched. What then? Set the minimum price to 1000?

At some point, you have to give up trying to make everything foolproof. Fools are wonderfully inventive

To the OP....

Maybe you should try to find out who bought the land (if you can?). It is known that some bot-owners give the land back when there is a clear mistake.

But as other already stated, don't expect anything from LL, because it was a legal sale... not meant that way, but still legal.

Morwen.

You are correct but being too nice


Its no Mistake. The Bot owner doesnt make a mistake buying the land for 1L, some just dont like getting cuaght doing it.

If the owner never complained the Bot owner would hum happily right along.

Another possibility in all this would be to implement an "escrow" system, where, for say 24 hours the system considers it "sold" but still in the possession of the original owner, until they confirm the sale. If the seller agrees quickly, then it goes through faster, but that would let the seller back out of these "oops" deals more easily.

In my relatively short time in Second Life I have heard one person admit to using the "abandon land" feature to get out of paying tier. It is possible others have set their land for sale at L$1 under the same motivation.

Thanks to landbots, people who need to sell immediately to avoid another month's tier now need only to set their land for sale at L$1 below market; it will sell just as fast as had they set it for sale at L$1 total.

Possible? sure - Does it happen? Like i said Ive never heard of anyone doing it.

Ever.

In two years.

Ive heard about all sorts of people being swooped. So obviously being able to dump your land on the market for 1L is less of an issue than Land swooping.


-------------------------
Incidently -

Thats why I said 100L, you could effectively dump your land on the market for 100L guarantee to still get swooped.

While the 1L transfers wouldnt show on the land search.

That's a good idea. I think people think when they sell land to a friend they need to set a price (how can you sell for 0L, they might think). I'm sure they set it at 1L because they think that's correct, and they never imagine that if they make a mistake someone will swoop down in under a minute and buy the land.

Colette's idea also rocks. I bet even doing it for 0L and 1L would work.

Wasn't it Lisse Livingston who used to run land classes back in the day? I think we need a required land class, or at least a class that, if one choses not to take it, one cannot later complain. Of course, with so many people I have no clue how that would be possible.

These threads will continue to be a common occurance until the system is altered to accomodate automated land buying. It just wasn't designed with that in mind. My proposals are far from perfect, but atleast they are something. I would vote for just about anything that would prevent these "muggings" of newer, inexperienced residents.

The automated systems have proven that they are just to fast for any human. If LL is unwilling to change the system, they could atleast change the wording on the pop up dialogue warning people that if they proceed with the sale, an automated system will buy the land instantly even if they are alone in the sim.

Nothing in the literature or the in game prompts warns people about automated land buying. So it is an unfair situation to the uninformed resident that does need to be corrected.

Look at it from the point of view of someone who is relativly new, they are unaware of land bots and see no one else in their sim and think it is safe so they proceed with transferring the land by selling it to anyone for 2 reasons.

The first reason is, It is human nature to take the path of least resistance. So it is easier to just select "Anyone" from the drop down menu. Especially when you think you are safe and only have to defend your land from other humans.

The second reason, if I remember correctly, is the first option on the drop down menu is to select "Anyone", with the second option being to select a specific person. Again making it easier for them to choose the first option.

The automated systems aren't going anywhere until LL decides they need to stop them. The very least they can do is update the process to help the regular people adapt to this new form of land buying.