Gift Card Security

[Anna Nova]

Hi, I had such good results with my post earlier today, I thought that I would ask you lovely people another question that has been bugging me.

I went to Alien Gizmo's, it's a clothes store.  They had a vendor for a free $250L Gift Card.  The vendors in the store all appear to be Caspervend, who I consider to be relatively trustworthy.  The Gift Card works like a Caspervend Gift Card - you wear it, touch a vendor, the Gift Card displays a button to buy the item and the text above tells you the price and the amount of credit left on the Gift Card.  If you then click the Buy Now button on the Card, the vendor debits the card and the delivery is made.  Great!

Now, if the credit on the card is insufficient to cover the cost, the card asks for permission to debit your Linden Dollar Account for the difference.  Now a dire warning from Linden Labs pops up:

It sounds like you are giving the owner of the store permission to take any amount they want from your Linden Dollar account FOREVER!  The words '...at any time, with no further warning or request'.  I do not trust anyone, not even my mother, with that kind of authority.

As it happens Alien Gizmo's don't seem to have a Gift Card top up system (I thought all Caspervend Gift Cards did - which makes me wary) because that is what I have always done in the past when the Gift Card didn't have enough credit.

What exactly are the risks associated with saying 'Allow access'?  I have quite a bit of $L in my account.

Thanks a Million!  Anna.

 

Edited May 11, 2017 by anna2358

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, anna2358 said:

It sounds like you are giving the owner of the store permission to take any amount they want from your Linden Dollar account FOREVER!  The words '...at any time, with no further warning or request'.  I do not trust anyone, not even my mother, with that kind of authority.

That's a very healthy attitude. In this case it's not quite as bad as it seems though. A scripted item can only access your Lindens if it is owned by you and either worn or rezzed. It's perfectly safe to store it in yru inventory and once the object is deleted, any permissions assigned to it are deleted too.

Unofortunately it is not possible to grant an item limited access to your Linden account, it's all or nothing at all. This leaves the system wide open for all kinds of scams of course but there's nothing we can do about it except being careful. If you are sure this is a legitimate card from a legtimat SL business, no worries. If you're unsure, don't try to sue it.