Definition of alternate account?

I know that SL charges a one time fee to have an alternate account (or second character)... but what exacly is the definition of this? I have three computers in my house, one is mine, the others are my wifes and my sons... but we share the same internet connection. Is it ok for each of us to have our own account without paying for additional accounts? Will SL punish us for using 3 accounts connected from the same IP address at the same time?

...and to elaborate on this: Why would I pay US$ 10 to create an alternate account when I can get a free account for, well, free?

One warm body in real life gets one free "Basic" account. Any additional accounts that are used by that same real person are alternates, and legally should be paid for. So if you, your mate, and your child all play, each of you may have one free account. Any additional accounts exceeding that one per warm body limit, like your "furry alter-ego who likes to explore", would be alts.

If you later choose to upgrade from a free basic account to a paid Premium account, you don't get to replace it with another "free" account. But a new Basic account is just a one-time $9.95 USD fee.

This assumes you are an honest individual and that you provide valid sign-up information, of course, for each of the three of you. Many people choose to be dishonest and steal additional free accounts from LL by providing false or inaccurate sign-up information. If you choose to steal accounts, you could eventually get caught and lose ALL your accounts, and all your in-world assets. Personally, I'd rather be honest and pay for what I ask for.

Are they still limiting the number of alts you can pay for, though?

No. That limit has been abolished. There used to be a limit of 5 accounts per household, for life. That no longer exists.

Ok, thanks for the answers. This leads me to another question. I have a paid account, but my wife and son have free accounts, can they set their "home" to be on my land (without them paying anything for their accounts)?

Sure Ylikone. I don't know how one does go about that, but since wife and son are entitled to have a free account, being real persons, you can do it for free.

Their account status, as far as I'm aware, has nothing to do with setting Home. Only the owner of the land can set Home to that parcel.

It used to be possible that members of a Group could also set Home, but that feature is currently disabled due to an upgrade glitch. This may or may not return soon.

If you haven't already, though, I would recommend setting up a Group for your family members. Then you can set permissions to allow all members of the Group to build on your land. Again, this has nothing to do with whether or not they have Premium Accounts. They would only need to upgrade if their particular alt wanted to own land.

Really? Currently I'm not a land owner, but who knows... I would miss that feature badly (and not only me, I guess)!

So an alt avatar is just another account,
completely seperate from the premium account you already have?

It does not, for instance, share my inventory? -- I guess not.
Will it have my date of birth? -- I guess no.
Will it have my payment info? -- Probably yes: "Payment info used."
The latter is a definite advantage over a free account.

I am not looking for ways to be dishonest, just trying to understand how things work.

By the way: My spouse does have a free account,
on the same IP-address [and a warm body I can assure you that].
There is no problem in that.

Not sure of the home situation but providing you 'allow others to set landmark' then family can all have a landmark for it.

Useful being able to hit cntrl/shift/H to get home but is this the only perk?

Are you sure? I had a friend just last night set home on my land, but then he's a newbie so maybe he didn't notice it didn't work.

Yes, alt is a new avatar.
New inventory though if you 'friend' them you can give items to inventory and pay!
New birthday.
Same payment info.

Very happy for you with the warm body White Hyacinth

The group thing was quirky a couple of weeks back. Newer members could. Old members couldn't. ... I wish I could rephrase that!

This thread leads me to ask another question. I have an alt account, that I legally paid for. Now, since i am at the top of my tier land wise with my main avatar, if I were to upgrade to a premium account with my alt, and purchase some more land and then group it with my main avatar - would this be legal?

Essentially what I am doing here is owning more land by paying for a smaller tier with my alt account, as opposed to jumping to the next higher tier with my main account, which would cost much more.

You are paying for two separate avatars. Yes, you can group them I'm certain.
Oddly, my problem is I can't get my alt logged into the website to upgrade. I'd be interested to hear if you can Jake.

The ability to set a home position isn't working quite right at the moment. You *should* be able to create a group, invite your friends/family to join that group, and set the land to belong to the group. There is then a group role permission that you can assign to everyone in the group, or to a select subset of that group, to allow them to set their home position on land owned by that group, or to make landlmarks there, or to build there... But those permissions don't all work right.

Alt accounts do not share inventory or account L$ balance, though you can "Pay" L$ from one account to another to transfer funds.

Accounts only share the same "Avatar Birth Date" if they were actually created on the same day. If I made a new alt today, it's birth date is today, not the date over a year ago when I first joined SL.

If you use the same payment info and real world ID info on the alt accounts, then they share that info. No one but LL will be able to see that "Fred Basic" and "George Premium" share the same payment info. They both just show as "Payment Info Used", if the new account used the payment info on creation to pay the $9.95 alt fee.

You can add payment info to a previously-created free account without becoming Premium, and in fact without actually spending any money. A friend of mine initially created an account but did not provide payment info. They later 'made it legit' by adding their payment info to the account. That alt showed as "Payment Info on File", until they actually bought some L$ with it.

Yes, you could do that, by forming a group that your two accounts belong to, and setting the two parcels to the same shared group. In fact, if you actually set ownership of the land to the group, even though both accounts that donate land to it are "you", you get a 10% bonus on how much land that group can hold without going over tier limits at each level.

Do you mean you can't ever get your alt logged in or just at this moment? I can't test for you right now since i am not at home, however, in general yes, I have logged in with my alt both in world and on SL homepage several times...

DOUBLE CHECK YOUR ALT'S NAME!!! When i first created him I couldn't log on until I realized I had the name spelled wrong

Thanks Jake, no, alt has never logged into webpage. Tried password help and got an email from them. Went to site which prompted me security questions on in-world matters I got totally wrong and ran out of tries LOL

Jake, perfectly legal - and - if they belong to the same group and you let the group own the land you get a 10% bonus (or at least the group does)

As long as the details are accurate, I don't see why, but strange things do happen. My RL partner (the person who introduced me to SL) moved in with me a few months ago so from that point we started sharing the same ISP, and therefore IP address and sometimes, the same desktop computer (in the study of my house) because it's the most powerful. Suddenly, that computer could no longer be used to access Second Life (a message saying as much appeared when trying to login). Although we got this fixed, we never got an adequate explanation for it and I assume it was because two accounts with different cardholder names registered at two different addresses (until CC company was informed of address change) were suddenly being accessed via the same IP, and therefore password sharing was suspected. This is speculation of course, but as long as you can provide a plausible explanation should things go wrong, I wouldn't worry about losing those accounts should LL decide to clamp-down on free-alt abusers. Incidentally, I think they should clamp-down. It's hardly fair on honest people paying ten dollars for their alts to have a free-for-all for those prepared to take advantage of such an obvious loop-hole that only requires a single question to be answered incorrectly during sign-up.

For the longest time I had trouble setting my home to my favorite sim in which I am part of the group. Now it worked for me though. I think the group has to own the land or have some kind of land rights enabled. Also, I had to make that group my active group before I could set the land to my home. I didn't know that before but it works now.