Circumventing Billing Limits by creating Alternate Accounts

Before commenting on the following thread, I'd appreciate if you did read the following two threads, one of which provides discussion between myself and several other land barons on why this would be of interest and the second which presents an answer a month and a half ago to this question before wait times on limit increases became unbearably long.

Here they are:

/327/70/163336/1.html /139/02/154618/1.html

Now that we're on the same page and understand the basics involved here, allow me to present a very valid reason why it would be extremely difficult to suggest that creating alternate accounts should be "frowned upon". Take in example, all of us that have boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands and wives. Now, assuming both of you have a credit card, should one of you participate in Second Life, there is nothing stopping you from encouraging your partner to create an account -- but here's the catch -- the partner doesn't actually use the account, he/she merely provides you with a method of funnelling your currency/USD to an alternate account so that you can continue to buy/sell/purchase well in excess of your limit. Now, is this wrong? It certainly would seem to me that this is no different than me creating an alt and using it in the way described above, without misleading LL. I, personally would prefer the second option if I were LL, at least this person is being 100% honest, merely trying to get a higher trading limit, something difficult to achieve when his emails are not being replied to.

This can, of course be taken a step further. There is nothing stopping you from 'enticing' business associates, relatives etc financially to allow you to setup dummy accounts in their name using their financial information to provide you with additional funnelling accounts. One again I ask, is this wrong? Is this any less/ more immoral than creating 2 or 3 alts and maxing billing on each of them?

What about having 1 account strictly for mainland and a second account strictly for private islands? Maybe a third account for currency speculation?

Where do we draw the line on what could be considered taking advantage of LL's TOS and what is merely operating in a manner that is most convenient to each and everyone of us? Surely, there must be some middle ground here...

So, let's hear what you all think, all opinions are welcome, just please do read the two links beforehand -- and reading my reasoning wouldn't hurt for those of you who just read the last paragraph generally!

I don't entirely understand it. Perhaps someone can enlighten me.
How many people need to sell over 5000 usd worth of Lindens or buy over 2500 usd worth of Lindens a month?
I can understand if its against the TOS if Lindens don't want to lose money or hassles with someone laundry money through Second Life or If a bunch of people with millions of linden cash out every dime and having to pay extremely high check to someone. It would be hardship to the economy and their pocket books perhaps if someone wanted to cash out extremely large sum of lindens.
Yet how many of us current have million usd worth of Lindens?
Not many I bet.
As for your group land I suggest you contact support directly.
One thing that I heard if you have group land settings wrong or if you have under 2 members you could lose the land but you haven't lost the land have you?
Group Deed thing still intimidates me I have read about it but I don't get it.

If you buy sims at auction then split them up and sell them, you receive L$ in return. If you want to reinvest this income, you need to convert the L$ back to US$ in order to buy more land at auction. At recent prices of over US$3000 a sim, it doesn't take long before you've exhausted your US$5000 limit.

This may seem hypothetical but it is actually the problem Reece has.



I sold over a million lindens in one go on several occasions over the past month. I would imagine many land barons would have done the same, as a million lindens is approx US3600, or roughly the price of a sim recently.

Actually, what he said was "million usd worth of Lindens".

No problem dude. If your Enterprise level 4 tier hasn't come through yet, just set a 16 sq.m. to L$ 999,999,999 and cross your fingers.

Ah yeah, heh. Oops! The first part of my post is still valid.

Stephen is 100% correct on my intentions. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that a $5,000usd Res1 or even a $10,000usd Res2 does not last more than a few days if you go about doing business in such a fashion.

We understand the concern, but that is not the simple answer.

We would be more appropriate is to have the actual money account and the avatar account more seperate.

In you example, if it there is an alt account because of a relationship/marriage, then LL could assign one money account. It would be like a joint bank account.

Not everybody will want joint account.

If the usage is to do business, then this seperate money account can be that business account. Several avatar could have access to that business account.

Hmmm... SL seems to be already headed in that direction with "group land & money". All what LL needs to do is add the ability to assign a group to a business account... which is kinda like that ALT your talking about. Deed done...

I set a 512m parcel to that once! I didn't want to accidentally transfer it at $L 0 or something, but, hey, I could have somehow found a way to live with the sale option!

As for how far to bend the terms of service... heh, if you have a stake in the grid economy, I would say 'not at all' is your best bet.


I just did some searches, and couldn't go back more than about a year in the Land and Economy subforum - anyone out there, is this truly how the forum works now or did I simply not run the search right?



Reece, I think it would be *highly* enlightening for you to see and hear what happened to a few people in the past, with regard to the land market. In their own words.

I think you and your persona are very cool, and you will do as well as might be possible... but until the day comes that people can sell short on land, you'll see why so many ran for the private islands to do business. And still are, even at 295 USD/mo.

Good luck, and keep a weather eye on consumer demand...

I don't know anyone who makes that much being newbie but I really think it would be in LL's interest for those who can spend and earn more to have clearer and better way then the current limit system even if they require some type of credit check system to make sure they are going to get paid if that the issue.
I really wish I could afford to buy sim in auctions but I can't imagine at the moment having that type of funds yet.
Several things that I have wonder about that isn't related (yet sort of is) but I am curious about is perhaps someone hear can explain this to me
How do you get enough people to buy so you can get millions of L in first place?
If your making millions or billions of L can you put this value in some type of cash credit within second life i.e like a prepaid account that see usd versus L?
Is cashing out limited because they really don't want people to take money out of the economy?
How many higher L earners put L back in the economy towards jobs, community?

I spoke to Pathfinder Linden inworld yesterday and told him about the huge delays in getting tier reviews. He said he would look into it but what that means or will do I have no idea.

just to add something here for another view

while some people have their limits up and as a result they can do serious business here, some others are treated like having just personal accounts and 512 plots of land.

Since this seems to me as an unequal treatment to different individuals, i can really see this as a small club of people who have the opportunity to play and some others can't join the club.

Maybe i am wrong, but in any case I don't like it and it starts to be very annoying

If you have something a lot of people want, they will buy it. That could be something nice you made, or freedom from a casino popping up next door.

Yes you can convert $L to USD credit on the LindeX, providing there are other people wanting to buy $L.

Cashing out really isn't limited too much; I believe the controls in place now are merely to ensure that fly-by-night frauds or scams, or money laundering doesn't occur. Yes, you can get your money out fairly easily nowadays.

Most of the high $L earners put back $L in the economy. Shopkeepers need land, land needs development, so on and so forth. I've personally hired item artisans, building designers, entire sim architects, and paid out for a whole bunch of other services that many wouldn't think of. Unless you can script, build items, texture, create clothing, run a business, staff your events and manage everything like Inspector Gadget, well, you are gonna need someone else's expertise. Which often requires $L.



Edit: Brazil, if you start doing some serious business I'm sure your limits will be raised simply for the asking.

serious or not, you can call it as you can.
Last month i got 5 sims at auctions and my credit limit is 5000 as everybody.

The real problem is that i ask continously from December, many times, by email, following the review process, leaving messages to the phone machine (since i have waited many times for 20 minutes and nobody pick ups the phone).

So I did ask, but not lucky enough to get even a response.
It seems it's not so easy to ask SL for doing something, unless they respond only to whom they like doing business with

Thanks for the advice Desmond After my loss today, I'm thinking about getting into islands -- at least that way I won't have to worry about losing 2k usd in a single day...

Hmmm... I do recall it took a little while for me, too, and this was back before the incredible rush of new members.

If it's any consolation, I can't seem to get through on the phones either. Or couldn't, past tense - last I tried was before they doubled up on concierge staff so maybe it's better now.

I'm not too upset about it because peak daily users has increased by about a factor of six or more since I did all that, and I am sure they are busy.

When I log in after being offline for 24 hours, I usually log in to a heavy storm of IM's myself, one every several seconds. This doesn't fade for a good long while, and I can really appreciate what it must be like to work there. I only manage 14 sims. I can't imagine what they go through...

Since I can also understand what they pass through with so many users and i suppose many many many requests for almost anything, I give them an excuse and try to pe patient. Sometimes it upsets me, but what else can we do than wait. And somebody could say to me, if you don't like it just go out of here. So to be sticked here , it seems that I do like it a lot, even with all the ups and downs