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Potential Credit card fraud


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I just recieved the message below, obviously fraud but i felt some one should know about it.  Many SL users are not familiar with the system and may get caught.

 

Operations Department - Second Life to me
show details 2:48 PM (2 hours ago)
 

Dear Resident,

I am Paramjit B. from the Operations Department at Cassava Enterprises (Gibraltar) Ltd. I am contacting you with regards to your Linden Lab account with username "JamesT asm".

As part of our continued efforts to provide confidence and security for all of our members, we will always seek to verify the ownership of any credit cards used to make a deposit. As such your account may experience enhanced security steps at deposit stage, including processing through Verified By Visa or Mastercard Secure.

To process your deposits without this requirement and in order to become a fully verified customer, please send us the following documentation –

-  A photocopy of your credit card ending # 0479 (front & back)
-  A photocopy of your national identity document such as an ID card, Passport or Driver's License

These documents can be sent to us by you uploading them through the link:

http://secondlife.com/my/account/billing-verification

Please copy and paste the above address directly to your web browser. You will then be prompted to enter your username and password. You will then be guided through a simple process to upload the requested documentation.

Please note that to ensure the security of your documents we have implemented powerful security policies, rules and technical measures to protect the financial security of our Residents. However, please make sure that you block the middle 8 numbers of any credit/debit card uploaded and also block the CVV (3 digit code) on the back of such cards.

If you have any further queries with regards to our requests please review first our Frequently Asked Questions, located on the “Contact Us” tab of the website. Here you will find all the information on why we routinely request documents, how it is possible to send these documents, and the type of documents that we will accept. All these questions and more are answered by typing in the relevant key words to the Frequently Asked Questions search option.

Many thanks for your continued patience and co-operation in this matter.

Regards
Paramjit B.
Payment Operations
Second Life
Operations@payments.secondlife.com

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Are you sure that is a fraud?

I think I read somewhere that new SL cashier is connected to 888.com which is also connected to Cassava Enterprises (Gibraltar) Ltd.   The information requested is being asked to be sent to genuine SL links and to block out your card number and security code. So I`m wondering how it would be a successful fraud.

Maybe I`m missing something.

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James, I would at least verify this with Lindenlabs ..... see contact details below and please post back here so other residents can be informed *meows*

 

Contacting Linden Lab billing support

If you have a non-technical issue with your account related to billing concerns, you can call the Linden Lab billing team at the following toll-free numbers:

  • US/Canada: 800-294-1067
  • France: 0805-101-490
  • Germany: 0800-664-5510
  • Japan: 0066-33-132-830
  • Portugal: 800-814-450
  • Spain: 800-300-560
  • UK: 0800-048-4646

Long distance (not free): 703-286-6277

The billing team is available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.



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Hi Peewee, yes its fraud, the address/link is false,  is not as it should be, the "my" is in the wrong place and no one would ask for a photocopy of a credit card, front  and back, and an ID photocopy.  Credit card payments are now verified, outside the US, by secure online systems run by the card issuers, via the Cashier, as is my case, so further  "verification" is fraud :-)

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Thanks for the numbers Wildcat, Ill try contacting them but I am fairly certain it is fraud.  The original email had a url at the top (where it came from), the forum rejected it as false when i tried to copy it to the the post, also the address is wrong it should read "my.secondlife.com" not as it is shown on the email.  Ill check it anyway and post tomrrow :)

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no legit business should EVER ask you to photocopy a card front and back.... and while the link (as shown in this forum anyways) looks valid, it does not lead to a known resource.  the advice to block out numbers is sound.... this looks more like a format test for someone looking to create a fraud template, or a template that was not filled out properly.

if it did originate from an SL contracted source, someone is oh so getting fired

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 I'd just send it on to LL's spam department.. Oh, wait, LL did away with that! 

Oh, wow. Umm.. it looks like LL may have done something very stupid and entered into an agreement with Cassava Enterprises for processing e-payments via their Dragonfish.  A bit of research turns up that Cassava is the company that owns 888.holdings, which is a system of gambling/gaming sites..

If I got this message,  I think I'd tell LL to shove it, and leave.  No way in he-double hockey sticks am I gonna photocopy my drivers license and credit card just to pay them for use of their system.  I'm pretty sure that in some countries, that's highly illegal.

 

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Arkady Arkright wrote:


JamesTasman wrote:-  A photocopy of your credit card ending # 0479 (front & back)

NEVER EVER
send
ANYONE
a photocopy of the back of your credit card - it will have your security code on it.

To be fair they did say to obscure those numbers except the 0479 set. LL we need clarification here, please:smileywink:

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given that the link was non functional, and the rest of the information is common knowledge already, that photocopying credits is certainly a non-standard practice, and several other fraud attempts recently on SL users, I'd have to say this smells like a stupid fraudster...

A ticket to LL should solve any mystery for good though

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Hi all,

Well I have now managed to check with LL in the states and Europe.  This is a new system for at least Western European users.  The company mentioned in the original post is genuine and is carrying out LLs security checks.  This is, as the email says, to enable international users to verify their details and not have to go through further security checks each time they wish to purchase L$.  There is a new international freephone number for billing support 008 007 1237123.  I have to say that the original email could have been worded a little differently maybe or SL users should have been informed about this in advance, but I guess that would have been hard to do.

Thanks for all your comments and do pass this new number around.

James :-)

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Back again :-)  I've decided that under no circumstances will I send the details these people ask for and have written in reply to their email saying so.  I will continue with the existing system of having to go through the security checks.  The risk is unacceptable and for Linden to ask this of users is in my mind unacceptable also.

 

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Yes, it's fraud. Gibralter is as english-speaking as England is but the author of the message isn't a native english speaker - or is uneducated.

The suggestion to copy and paste the url into a browser is merely a confidence booster, so that people will trust it and click on the url instead.

 

ETA;

I posted before I read that James had confirmed that it's not fraud. I'm astonished that LL is associated with an email that's written exactly like non-english speaking fischers write. If I'd received it (and I may have), it would have gone the way of all the spam that I get, without giving it a second thought. If I do receive it, it will still go that way, even though I now know that it's genuine.

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Well. Seeing that this is a company with servers in London, with registered office in a tax haven, carrying out online activiities illegal in the USA, probably using outsourced employees, you might expect them to treat their customers with the level of suspicion appropriate to their activities. I just hope my cc provider will not treat me likewise when they see where my money is going.

The other side of the coin is that this probably means they can offer a high level of protection against cc fraud as their business must be such a regular target of the fraudsters. Perhaps that's why they were chosen.

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If the letter is for real, then for the purposes of buying L$ I see no problem in providing the verification "password" if requested by your card issuer and don't really understand why anyone would want to "bypass" this sensible security measure.

However, I foresee serious issues arising if it transpires that verification is in future required in respect of automated payments such as tier and premium membership. If those payments are initially declined without verification, what happens to the status of your account or landholdings if you're, say, on holiday and unable to make the payments manually within a day or so or even a week?  

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thanks for the attention Blondin, this is certainly not a practice that any legit business has ever instituted in my experience, and is very worrisome coming from one contracted by LL to handle sensitive financial and personal information.

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I notice that the creator of this thread, James Tasman, records a post count of nil despite his several postings here. Does this indicate that his account might have been closed?

I hope that in alerting us all to this potential scam, and then apparently verifying for our benefit that it was not a scam but a legitimate "new system", James Tasman was not himself party to a scam directed at grabbing SL usernames and passwords.

If my hope is ill-founded, and the creation of this thread is, indeed, part of a scam, then it seems to me that the whole thread should be deleted forthwith so that no-one is taken in thereby.

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