"Linden Dollar assessment"?

[coreyfaure]

I just got an email I've never seen from Linden Labs before, and I was curious what's going on, if anyone else has seen this before. The email is as follows:

This email is to notify you that we have taken some action on your Second Life account. 

Action taken: Linden Dollar assessment

We regret to inform you that the L$ recently sent to you may have been obtained through an unauthorized source. Due to the manner in which the L$ were originally obtained, we have removed them from your account.

We have removed the L$ 238 that was sent on May 3, 2019

(End relevant part of email)

 

Has anyone else gotten this before? What do they mean by an unauthorized source? Does this mean I just don't get paid whenever this kind of thing happens? I'm pretty confused as to what went on behind the scenes.

 

[Chic Aeon]

29 minutes ago, coreyfaure said:

I just got an email I've never seen from Linden Labs before, and I was curious what's going on, if anyone else has seen this before. The email is as follows:

This email is to notify you that we have taken some action on your Second Life account. 

Action taken: Linden Dollar assessment

We regret to inform you that the L$ recently sent to you may have been obtained through an unauthorized source. Due to the manner in which the L$ were originally obtained, we have removed them from your account.

We have removed the L$ 238 that was sent on May 3, 2019

(End relevant part of email)

 

Has anyone else gotten this before? What do they mean by an unauthorized source? Does this mean I just don't get paid whenever this kind of thing happens? I'm pretty confused as to what went on behind the scenes.

 

Stolen lindens - stolen credit card to buy the lindens used to buy from you?

This happened to a ton of us (well a big percentage of a small group of creators) in Sansar.  So looks like you sold something on the Marketplace that was 250 and they are removing your part of the money from your account. Nothing you can do about it. It's the law. 

 

[coreyfaure]

47 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

Stolen lindens - stolen credit card to buy the lindens used to buy from you?

This happened to a ton of us (well a big percentage of a small group of creators) in Sansar.  So looks like you sold something on the Marketplace that was 250 and they are removing your part of the money from your account. Nothing you can do about it. It's the law. 

 

Ohhhh that makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up, credit card fraud didn't come to mind. 

[Lucia Nightfire]

What takes an act of Congress getting is the name of the person that gave you the money.

Even if they were farther down in the chain where said illegal funds were being passed it still helps a creator or business owner to take actions such disable content that was purchased, block future purchases or access until discussion with the person of interest can be made.

Without knowing the name of the person, you risk continued "theft by proxy" incidents, which have been prominent in SL for years, particularly with item sales, especially gacha.

A process of elimination cannot always be done if you have multiple sales of the same value occurring in the same time frame to multiple parties.

[Chic Aeon]

17 minutes ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

What takes an act of Congress getting is the name of the person that gave you the money.

Even if they were farther down in the chain where said illegal funds were being passed it still helps a creator or business owner to take actions such disable content that was purchased, block future purchases or access until discussion with the person of interest can be made.

Without knowing the name of the person, you risk continued "theft by proxy" incidents, which have been prominent in SL for years, particularly with item sales, especially gacha.

A process of elimination cannot always be done if you have multiple sales of the same value occurring in the same time frame to multiple parties.

In Sansar the person in question had their account removed. VERY likely that would happen here also, so I don't see any giant threat of future trouble with THAT avatar. 

[Lucia Nightfire]

8 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

In Sansar the person in question had their account removed. VERY likely that would happen here also, so I don't see any giant threat of future trouble with THAT avatar. 

That typically happens if there is no chain of distribution and only one person provided illegally obtained funds.

If there is a chain of distribution and no connection(IP, provided info, repeat money or inventory transactions) between accounts can be established, those at the bottom of said chain do not receive discipline nor are any purchased items returned to original owners. LL can only assume they were "innocent bystanders" in someone else's game.

This method of operation is intentionally exploited.

Edited May 5, 2019 by Lucia Nightfire

[Ela Talaj]

I had one too a few months ago - the first time I ever got one - and it is exactly what other posters said above. An interesting thing was that the relevant purchase was via the Marketplace and The Lab deducted from my account the whole purchase price (quite high) without regard to the 5% commission taken by the Lab on the purchase. I contacted The Lab about it and they refunded me the 5% without further ado.

[Akira Mistwood]

This just happened to me today after 10+ years on the MP. I get that they want the money back, but apparently I won't get my item back! It was an ultrarare gacha that sells for L$2k+ so that's a lot of potential income to lose.

[Samara Sharkfin]

I got 3 such L$ assessments during this month plus two in December.  Two during the last couple of days (that's why i was looking here . 
All from my MP gacha resell shop for totally around 1000 L$. Only once there was a rare item else just normal commons. 

I never had any in the 18 months since i sell on MP.

Have other merchants/creators received such assessments more often then normally, lately?

I wonder.

Edited January 29, 2020 by Samara Sharkfin

[Charlotte Bartlett]

For those of you that had it happen with Gacha - did you purchase the item from the creator direct at the event/store or from another third party reseller?   

[Samara Sharkfin]

1 hour ago, Charlotte Bartlett said:

For those of you that had it happen with Gacha - did you purchase the item from the creator direct at the event/store or from another third party reseller?   

Those Gacha sales were i got L$ assessments were from Gacha machines at events or from creators in-world shops.

But the source of the sold MP item has nothing to do with the L$ assessment. LL takes the L$ back that was send to you because "obtained through an unauthorized source ".

The really fishy thing is that by searching about that i find out that all threads talk about gacha. :-/

So i was wondering if it happens more often lately.
(and a lot of more questions ..but hey 

 

[StephanieBell]

I just got this same email from Linden Labs regarding an expensive gacha set I had for sale. I am unsure what I can do. I don't feel that I should have to pay the price for a Marketplace problem - Linden Labs should verify the integrity of $L dollars before adding them to a person's account. If anyone has dealt with this or has an idea of what I should be please let me know.  

[Mollymews]

56 minutes ago, StephanieBell said:

Linden Labs should verify the integrity of $L dollars before adding them to a person's account 

the difficulty here for Linden, and for us residents, is that when an account is phished Linden don't know this until the person who owns the account reports the theft. The reporting can be hours, days or weeks even, before the account holder logs in and discovers their L$ balance is zero

i do agree tho that in the case of No-Copy Transfer items then it would be good if there was a way for Linden Support to be able to return the items

is not simple to code up a push button solution for this, because of the way that people into stealing No-Copy Transfer items (as has happened to you) do with the item once they get it. Am not going to detail how the trail of stolen No-Copy Transfer items is covered/hidden by the thief, as I might get in trouble from Police Linden if I say on here

this said, I think that Linden should take the initial hit in these cases. Like reimburse the account which was phished.  Then try to hunt down the stolen item.  When Linden do recover the item and return to its owner then Linden deducts the money, the item owner previously received from the thief. When Linden can't recover the item then Linden swallows the cost of not being able to do so

 

Edited January 30, 2020 by Mollymews
typo

[StephanieBell]

In my case I have now had a chance to chat with the person who apparently bought the gacha items from my marketplace. S/he tells me that their account was hacked and overnight the hacker has proceeded to buy over $130,000L of items as "gifts" from a variety of marketplace merchants. This was from just this one account: the problem might be more widespread than this.

How can we, as a market-based community and economy, be expected to just absorb such losses? This is SERIOUS and potentially affects all Marketplace vendors but is potentially catastrophic for those selling NO COPY items.

As Molly suggests the fairest response by LL would be to return the money, try to trace and recover the items and if so return them and reclaim the funds. Otherwise they are penalizing those who have legally obtained $L and portrays Marketplace lacking security and integrity.

I am unsure if individual items have a identity number but if so there could be some sort of way to list, track, report or check against stolen items? 

A safeguard might be to not allow NO COPY items to be gifted thus making it easier to identify and track in the future, or allow venders to make a choice if their item is giftable. As NO COPY are usually transferable, gifts can be sent by the purchaser directly to its intended recipient. 

Any other ideas on how we might protect ourselves?

 

If this has happened to you please report asap to LL:  https://lindenlab.freshdesk.com/support/tickets/new

 

 

keywords: lindens reclaimed, stolen gacha, linden dollar assessment, scam, marketplace resellers, gacha, gatcha, paypal, no copy

[rasterscan]

Twice they have .. taken lindens away from my MP,  explaining there was fraudulent activity ( no other details ) by email. I just accepted it with a shrug, glad LL had caught some cheaters. But if it happens a lot it would soon become a nightmare.

[Mollymews]

1 hour ago, StephanieBell said:

A safeguard might be to not allow NO COPY items to be gifted thus making it easier to identify and track in the future, or allow venders to make a choice if their item is giftable. As

i think that you are onto something here

think about filing a JIRA request for a New Feature.  The New Feature being that Marketplace vendors can (as they choose) not show the Buy As Gift button on any particular product

[Nikilei]

The second time this has happened. LL has taken, $ 35.00 out of my account and I am out the no-copy merchandise. I know who bought it so I sent an IM asking for the return of the items. Giving the person who "gifted" them the opportunity to make it right.  They have been here for 13 yrs. It's hard to believe that someone with that length of time would deliberately use fake Lindens. He could also be a victim [unless many sellers were victimized here], I don't know.

[Nikilei]

4 hours ago, Mollymews said:

 

I think that Linden should take the initial hit in these cases. Like reimburse the account which was phished. 

 

This is the second time this has happened to me. The first time was due to LL own servers!  But, they didn't reimburse anyone for their  losses even though it was LL fault! "It's in the TOS" they told me when I tried to get a reimbursed for their mistake. LL never loses money, their customers always pay the losses.  Not too user friendly. 

[Raspberry Crystal]

If that person's account was hacked then is it their fault though? They've lost their money, you've lost your goods, the only person who wins is the hacker.

[StephanieBell]

Molly, I put in the new feature request. 👍

 

I understand that LL doesn't want to be out the money, none of us do, but how is it fair that honest vendors have to pay the price for cracks in their system? It seems if LL are accepting our items for sale we need to feel confident that they are safeguarding them while they are in their possession. They should be insured against fraudulent activity. Is that not what part of the 10% commission fee should entitle us to? 

I don't blame the person who's account was compromised but LL should be able to track where money and items are going. The items must be in the system somewhere. $L dollars must be traceable: it also is still in the LL economy or taken out by transfer. It might take some time but it needs to be sorted. If it such a problem that no one has time to address it then we all need to be very worried about the safety of using LL Marketplace.

 

[Nikilei]

19 minutes ago, Raspberry Crystal said:

If that person's account was hacked then is it their fault though? They've lost their money, you've lost your goods, the only person who wins is the hacker.

No not at all. I feel bad for anyone who's accounts were hacked or fake Lindens used to purchase items. Did my comment sound like I was blaming the buyer? I sure didn't mean it to sound like that! [that's the trouble with these kinds of communications; misunderstandings]  I don't know who started it, no one does but it does sound like a few of us were hit.  

[Raspberry Crystal]

Thanks @Nikilei I didn't understand what you said!

[Nikilei]

 

13 minutes ago, Raspberry Crystal said:

Thanks @Nikilei I didn't understand what you said!

This is a hard way to communicate with others; we can't hear vocal inflections nor see body language.  Words can mean different things to different people but I am glad you said something so I could explain myself.  I did talk to the person who had his account hacked and he lost a lot of money. I think he is protected by PayPal and he should be reimbursed; I hope so anyway. He is a nice guy.

[Nikilei]

LL is taking their commissions out of the transactions that were invalid. Please contact them as they shouldn't be taking money from a fraudulent account but yet making us lose the money and our inventory.  It's not right.

[Lucia Nightfire]

4 hours ago, StephanieBell said:

A safeguard might be to not allow NO COPY items to be gifted thus making it easier to identify and track in the future, or allow venders to make a choice if their item is giftable. As NO COPY are usually transferable, gifts can be sent by the purchaser directly to its intended recipient.

 

2 hours ago, Mollymews said:

i think that you are onto something here

think about filing a JIRA request for a New Feature.  The New Feature being that Marketplace vendors can (as they choose) not show the Buy As Gift button on any particular product

This was discussed at a recent Web user group meeting:

And filed as BUG-227979.

I don't think the request has any priority ATM. If you want that to change, @Grumpity Linden or @Reed Linden will have to set that jira to Needs More Info to allow comments or maybe they will participate in the discussion here.