If you follow the instructions provided here, you will be asking your bank to help commit fraud against Linden Lab. I am not providing instructions as a guide for anyone to break the law.
It is my hope in providing these instructions that Linden Lab will recognize the potential of this fraud and will need to employ additional staff to prevent this fraud from occurring. It is my experience that Linden Lab does not even have the staff to answer their main corporate phone line or to provide competent technical support. If Linden Lab is required to add even one additional phone support person, the cost of this additional staff member will cost them tens of thousands of dollars a year in perpetuity. I never expect that my avatar Dante Portland will be reactivated. However, it is my goal that this ongoing expense will far exceed the $80.95 that was involved in my dispute with Linden Lab.
Ironically, it was one of Linden Lab's incompetent support people that pointed out how to commit this kind of fraud. As I have discussed earlier, what happened is that I gave the sum of 20,000 Lindens, or $80.95, to another player in-world in exchange for role playing services. When she was no longer available in Second Life, I tried to contact Linden Lab to return my money and charge her credit card for this balance. When I could not reach anyone at Linden Lab to help me, I finally contacted my bank to dispute the charge for the purchase of Lindens. The result was that my avatar Dante Portland was deactivated. Only at the event of this deactivation was I finally given a customer support phone number to call. If I had had this number to begin with, I might not have disputed the charge.
Second Life technical support at (866) 476-9763.
Premium Membership includes a virtual Home at No Additional Cost! Now, owning a home in Second Life is as easy as becoming a Premium Member. Second Life is the largest and most successful 3D virtual world created entirely by its users. Today, tens of thousands of creators around the world continually develop exciting new content and experiences and profit from selling millions of virtual items on the marketplace. On Tuesday, February 16th, 2021, and in a surprise to Second Life users, Linden Lab's Vice President of Engineering, Oz Linden (aka Scott Lawrence in the physical world) announced his forthcoming departure from the Lab. Oz joined Linden Lab in 2010, taking on the role of Director of Open Development.
Premium Membership includes a virtual Home at No Additional Cost! Now, owning a home in Second Life is as easy as becoming a Premium Member. Second Life is the largest and most successful 3D virtual world created entirely by its users. Today, tens of thousands of creators around the world continually develop exciting new content and experiences and profit from selling millions of virtual items on the marketplace. On Tuesday, February 16th, 2021, and in a surprise to Second Life users, Linden Lab's Vice President of Engineering, Oz Linden (aka Scott Lawrence in the physical world) announced his forthcoming departure from the Lab. Oz joined Linden Lab in 2010, taking on the role of Director of Open Development.
When I finally reached a customer support person, he told me that Dante Portland was deactivated because I had committed fraud against Linden Lab. At first I didn't understand what he meant, because what happened was that I was the one who was ripped off, first by Yaelle, and then even worse by Linden Lab.
Linden Lab Second Life Medical
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Hanging up with this one particular customer support idiot named Jake, it took me awhile to understand how he even thought I was committing fraud. The only way that this could have been the case is if I were actually working with Yaelle to rip off Linden Lab.
Linden Labs Server Status
The fraud that Jake accused me of would work like this:
Step 1) Person 1 would purchase Lindens with their credit card with one avatar.
Step 2) They would give these Lindens to Person 2 using a second avatar.
Step 3) Person 1 would contact their bank and dispute the charge for the purchase of Lindens.
Step 4) Since Linden Lab doesn't answer their phones, this dispute will be successful.
Step 5) Person 2 would cash out the Lindens for dollars, or the currency of their choice.
Step 6) Person 2 would then cancel their account on Second Life.
Step 7) Linden Lab would deactivate the avatar for Person 1.
Step 8) Person 2 would split the amount with Person 1 and the fraud would be complete.
There are questions about how much money could be made with this fraud and how often it could be done.
One question is how many Lindens can be converted to dollars per day. At one time, it was unlimited; now I understand that Linden Lab has put a cap on this amount. Even if this cap is only $500 per 30 day period, it would still make it worth doing this fraud regularly.
Another question is how many times a bank would allow a person to contest a charge. It may only be feasible to do this once a month per card, but then again it is easy these days to get credit cards from many banks. I also wonder if a person could contest a charge for a prepaid credit card that wouldn't connect a person with a specific staff of bank employees who would recognize this repeated activity.
The next question is could Person 1 and Person 2 in this scenario be the same person. I wonder how closely Linden Lab tracks the IP addresses of the people logging onto their grid. Even if these IP addresses were carefully logged, it is easily possible to use IP spoofing to make it appear that two computers are on opposite sides of the globe, even if they are sitting on the same desk. Of course, the best choice would be for the IP addresses of both computers to be spoofed so that neither were traceable to the person perpetrating the fraud.
Another question is how many times Linden Lab would allow you to sign up for yet another avatar using the same email address. It is likely that a person would need to get two new free email addresses every time they wanted to work this fraud and then cancel the addresses before they could be tracked.
I wonder how many people could do this fraud and how often they could do it.
If a flood of people try to do this fraud, it will probably cost Linden Lab a lot of money at first. Then after a short time, Linden Lab will be forced to implement policies and put on staff to prevent this fraud from continuing. The result is that Second Life will be an even less viable virtual world than it is now and that Linden Lab will have the continuing expense of defending against this type of fraud.
Second Life should not have its own currency at all
The truth is that Linden Lab handles the exchange of the Linden currency so incompetently that there should be a law against creating this type of in-world script. It is my opinion that all financial transactions should be handled directly through PayPal or some other impartial currency exchange that has a usefully functioning customer support staff.
