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1 hour ago, amyalka said:

@Linden Lab Will Tilia be able in the future to work with the banks directly, instead of Paypal? Because as I've mentioned on another thread, being in the EU and using the Paypal is really a pain. Paypal is doing the exchange from Dollars to Euro on a fee that I don't even understand it because it cuts out so much from the total of the money that I cashout, it feels like Paypal is stealing from the EU people so so so much that's getting tooo much. It would be good if you could find a way for the EU people to get their money exchanged on the current exchange rate w/o using Paypal.  

THIS!! Linden Lab, please use this Tilia opportunity for giving us non-US citizens alternative options of cashing out!!! I will welcome this Tilia change wholeheartedly IF this will mean avoiding dealing with PayPal altogether!! (I even have a suggestion on the implementation...) I am keeping my fingers crossed this Tilia change might actually turn out great for us non-US citizens if LL decides later to give us more cashout alternatives.

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Hello all.  This is my first post in...maybe a decade or so.  It's only commentary with little to say about the recent changes.  Move on if you like.

I used to spend a LOT of money in SL.  I used to be very active in the forums.  I attempted to take total ownership of Owasco--and came damn close.

My main account, (I have a few mostly forgotten alts)  Is pre-flexi, pre -land rush. I started to lose interest about the time there was talk of introducing mesh, tho I've been maintaining my account at yearly level at $72 per year with  a L$500 weekly stipend.  (Yes--500.)  The stipend, when cashed in through the the exchange, just about paid for my membership with a little left over.  For years, I logged in only to turn Lindens into USD and pay for another years dues.

I came back a few years ago.  Learned how to play all over again.  Learned to deal with mesh.  Got to back to the point where I could make just about anything I wanted.  Made new friends, became re-acquainted with old friends from WAY back in the day.

Lost interest again, but this time I maintained a parcel of land that was actually costing me a little bit of real money.

Soon after I paid my most recent dues, i got the "We're changing membership fees--lock in your old price for another year." email.  I mostly ignored it.  When I got around to checking my account, I found that my next dues will be $99 per year.

If I was active like I used to be, I'd have shrugged it off.  Now it feels like a lot of money for something I hardly do any more.

But for me, it's not just the higher dues and  the changes in payment processing.  SL no longer supports Linux, (Yes I know about Alchemy.)  And...Like I said, I don't really play any more.

I came here to check on how Tilia is going to affect my account.  My current determination is that it won't do much, except for the final $50-$100 or so I have left in that it's going to make it a little more annoying to cash out.

Anyway, LL won't miss me.  I'll miss SL a little bit.  SL and prims are the only "social" 3d modeling tool i know of.  There are a few friends who are urging me to stay, but if i do it will ultimately be basic--just before my membership fees are due.  And, going by LL's attitude towards Linux, and the issues I've had in the past uploading mesh with with an unofficial client...I probably won't bother.

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One thing this change might do is flush out long-dormant accounts of people who drifted away from SL years ago but continue to pay their subscriptions and tier because they forgot to stop them.

Sorry DancesWithRobots, I wasn't prompted to write this by your post above!    I meant the people who really have forgotten all about SL but are still paying.😧

Edited by Conifer Dada
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Not all countries issue goverment-ID other than passports, which are hideously expensive to apply for (and you have to be eligible first, which isn't a given).

There are driving licences in the UK, but not everyone has one of those either. I'm disqualified for medical reasons.

There are "official" nationally recognised ID schemes like CitizenCard that allow those without passports or driving licenses to prove age/identity, but these are not government issued.

Edited by Ana Stubbs
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4 minutes ago, DancesWithRobots Soyer said:

And, going by LL's attitude towards Linux, and the issues I've had in the past

 

9 minutes ago, DancesWithRobots Soyer said:

SL no longer supports Linux, (Yes I know about Alchemy.)

LL stopped supporting Linux quite some years ago - but there's talk about a new Linux client being developed soon™.

But that doesn't bother me, because there's the TPV's Firestorm, Cool VL Viewer, RLV, and Kokua which all are regularly updated to be on par with the most current official SL Viewer. And which I use because of RLV(a) that is not in the official viewer. Alchemy hasn't been updated since Nov 15, 2017; Singularity and other TPV's are only available for Windows (and some also Mac) - so there's not that plenty of choice anymore.

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1 minute ago, November Velde said:

Everyone will be given some account called Tilla.

Yes

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And if you don't use it, you must pay for it?

Only if you leave money on it left untouched for a whole year with no other activity on the account. Otherwise No.

And we're talking money money, not SL Funbuxx Lindex/L$ money. Cold hard cash, moola, dosh.

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And in order to use it and be forced to pay for it?

Your not forced to pay for it. If your talking about the "inactivity fee" that only applies to above, if you leave money on it and never touch the account again for any reason for a whole year, it will start to deduct from it till the $USD balance on it is at 0$.

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,I must give out all kinds of personal information? Is this correct?

Only if you plan on cashing out money, otherwise you should be safe to leave tilia collecting dust and spiderwebs in the corner.

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Social Security numbers are NOT safe to share unless it's a mortgage company or other financial institution on the same level. I'm a healthcare professional & receive healthcare related Industry IT news via email and EVERY SINGLE DAY I receive news that one or another healthcare related organization has had data breaches affecting thousands of patients. If healthcare organizations can't keep patients personal data safe, how will Tilia do so? When I get in to work & check my email, I will copy the information of which company's data has been breached with numbers of patients affected so that you can verify how dangerous a practice this will be. I don't share my SS# with ANY Physician's office or hospital and this is actually advised by those in the security industry. Hospitals and Physician offices etc, don't need my SS# to verify my identity and neither does Tilia. I review patients medical records all day, every day as part of my job & my very large health system actually no longer documents patient's SS# in their medical record because of the potential for breach of patient's personal information. Medicare is currently in the process of changing individuals Medicare #'s from SS#'s to a series of scrambled letters & numbers in order to protect patient's SS# in the event of a data breach wherever the patient may seek healthcare. So when I abstract a patient's medical record for quality assurance reasons, I no longer have access to a patient's SS# and that is the way it should be and code "not available" and it's not an issue.  LL needs to seriously reconsider this aspect of their relationship with Tilia. There are other ways to verify identity besides using SS#'s and those methods should be used.  I'm extremely unhappy about this and so should the rest of the SL community.  @LindenLabs

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3 minutes ago, November Velde said:

Am I reading this correctly? Everyone will be given some account called Tilla. And if you don't use it, you must pay for it? And in order to use it and be forced to pay for it, I must give out all kinds of personal information? Is this correct?

You're about as far off as you can get, besides the very first part.

  • Everyone will be given an account for the Tilia service.
  • If you deposit USD into your Tilia account and don't use the service at all for a year, your Tilia account's balance will be charged, not you.
  • You won't need to provide any personal information as long as you do not try to process credit through Tilia into your own bank account.
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15 hours ago, NeoBokrug Elytis said:

As I understand, you have to provide your ID info only if you cash out from SL (Turning your L$ into your local currency).  Everyone seems to be missing this point, and freaking out.

Additionally, that fee seems to only apply if your account is INACTIVE, and I assume that it only applies to fiat currencies and not L$.

Honestly this opens up a lot of doors for LL as a registered Money Services Business.  They can skip paypal all together, act as a bank, and convert their own payments from any currency including crypto.  LL was already pretty much fronting all the liabilities without any of the benefits of being an MSB since day one.  So it really makes sense for it to be official now.

As you understand it, but why can't they make it clear?

The inactive account thing looks to include just logging on as activity. I'm not 100% clear whether that includes logging in to Second Life, Sansar, or whatever else Tilia might provide these services for.

I remember some of the past problems there were, with even just buying a few L$, for people outside the USA. The US financial industry seems so primitive, compared to the rest of the world.

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2 hours ago, EdmundPendragon said:

After going through this thread the best I can, I am still very confused. My question (and I would very much appreciate an answer) is : "While I am a Premium member, I am not a Content Creator and as such, have never cashed out any money from Second Life. Why am I being required to have a Tilia account?".  And before someone chimes in with it is only if you want to process a credit, I refer to the line just before that which says : "Effective August 1, in order to continue using Second Life you will have to agree to Tilia’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.  A Tilia Account associated with your Second Life Account will automatically be created for you and you will not need a separate username or password to access your Tilia Account."  Does this mean Premium as well as non-Premium accounts? At this time, the only thing I will say for sure is that I will not provide my social security number under ANY circumstance and if that means I lose the $90+ dollars that I spent for a year of Premium so be it (since I very seriously doubt they will allow me to cancel the charge later in August).

As you have mentioned and quoted above, both the blog post and email notification AND the official explanation yesterday here  from someone in the lab -- it has been stated that EVERYONE (no mention of Premium or non-premium)  will automatically have a Tilia account "created for [them]". 

 

My question -- asked twice now with a fair amount of "heart  icons" given --  is WHY do the people that will NOT be using Tilia have to have an account made.  In my mind, only those USING Tilia to cash out need to have an account.   I can think of no other reason aside from vastly inflating the number of Tilia "users" that this is being required.  Adding the complete Second Life user base would naturally make Tilia look more -- popular, respectable, "stable"  -- pick your adjective --  to companies that consider using Tilia for their own company.  

 

For those that feel they cannot OK the Tilia TOS or privacy statement (that is only applicable to US citizens it says) and do not intend to log into Second Life again I am fairly sure that the credit card company you used would refund the part of your payment that cannot be used. This is called a back-charge and that practice has been in place (US anyway) for at least the last thirty years. I have used it rarely over that time and with various credit cards -- but each time my credit card company has refunded the money (one time when a gym went out of business and I was no longer able to use the rest of my membership -- the others were more fraudulent offenses). 

 

Anyone who has had a company and dealt with credit card charge-backs does NOT want them. There are often extra charges involved. So as a lawyer mentioned towards the beginning of this thread, asking first for a refund would be the proper thing to do. Actually your credit card company would want to know that you DID ask (how, when and who you talked to)  before moving onward. 

 

I am NOT suggesting that people run off today and try and get their money back (or even ask for it). I think a much more reasonable approach would be for Linden Lab to reconsider making EVERYONE  agree to (or at least click saying they do) a TOS and privacy statement that they have yet to use and most likely will never use.  Hopefully we will hear a response on this question soon.  

 

And as @Vanity Fair said, the TOS (thanks for reading Ryan) of Vilia mentions FEE a time or two (honestly I didn't read the whole TOS; I immediately knew I didn't agree with it) and you cannot get ANY information on the website without making an account. So it certainly SEEMS like you are agreeing to something that you cannot investigate before "signing".  

 

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2 hours ago, AyelaNewLife said:

Luckily you (and me and the vast majority of the SL playerbase) won't need to hand over such personal details. It's only the 1% of the 1% that make real money off of SL that will need to do all this. Remember, if all you do is use your SL income to subsidise your SL expenses, then you're not taking $ out of the ecosystem and thus are not affected.

"Effective August 1, in order to continue using Second Life you will have to agree to Tilia’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy."

Not quite feeling the 'lucky'.

If it's been 'used for years' anyway, why the big announcement now, right after fee increases?  What else is brewing behind the scenes that won't be announced until after the fact? FaceBrat's takeover of SL? Heaven forbid! 

Ok, so the real question is, (big 'if' here, 'cuz I probably won't) if I decide to leave on July 31st - who wants my stuff? ;) 

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This is not about Tilia getting copies of passports and utility bills; they already have much more than they ever needed. They have everything you ever sent to Linden Research, Inc.

Tilia is a growing, very important service for Linden Research's future. It needs as many users as possible.

SL is a very old service, winding down. It has many users.

Forcing each and every SL user - independent of their US$ balance or withdrawal history - to become a Tilia user is a very sensible business decision.

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6 hours ago, Fionalein said:

The "FAQ" was written before questions were even asked and so adressed almost nothing asked - I like how you ignored that before posting a smart answer...

I read the FAQ and it made sense to me, but I completely understand that some people didn't and wanted/needed clarification on some parts of it. 

However, there is a way to ask a question that doesn't involve the "OMGWTFYOUSCREWEDEVERYTHINGUPSECONDLIFEISDYINGIHATEYOUHOWCOULDYOUDOTHISTOUSIMLEAVING" default knee-jerk reaction some people have every time LL makes a change to something, especially after (as was the point of my post) LL posted that they were monitoring the thread and compiling the list of questions so they could answer them. 

But thanks for playing!

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17 minutes ago, LisaJCobalt said:

Social Security numbers are NOT safe to share unless it's a mortgage company or other financial institution on the same level. I'm a healthcare professional & receive healthcare related Industry IT news via email and EVERY SINGLE DAY I receive news that one or another healthcare related organization has had data breaches affecting thousands of patients. If healthcare organizations can't keep patients personal data safe, how will Tilia do so? When I get in to work & check my email, I will copy the information of which company's data has been breached with numbers of patients affected so that you can verify how dangerous a practice this will be. I don't share my SS# with ANY Physician's office or hospital and this is actually advised by those in the security industry. Hospitals and Physician offices etc, don't need my SS# to verify my identity and neither does Tilia. I review patients medical records all day, every day as part of my job & my very large health system actually no longer documents patient's SS# in their medical record because of the potential for breach of patient's personal information. Medicare is currently in the process of changing individuals Medicare #'s from SS#'s to a series of scrambled letters & numbers in order to protect patient's SS# in the event of a data breach wherever the patient may seek healthcare. So when I abstract a patient's medical record for quality assurance reasons, I no longer have access to a patient's SS# and that is the way it should be and code "not available" and it's not an issue.  LL needs to seriously reconsider this aspect of their relationship with Tilia. There are other ways to verify identity besides using SS#'s and those methods should be used.  I'm extremely unhappy about this and so should the rest of the SL community.  @LindenLabs

Hi Lisa, This is exactly how my personal info was stolen but luckily for me not used. A "new-hire" admin clerk at my primary care doctor's office was caught making copies of patient's information. It was later discovered that she was giving these copies to her son, who was opening accounts,etc., with this information. This is why I will NEVER give my social security number to anyone (with the exception as someone said earlier the government who issued it in the first place).

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7 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

My question -- asked twice now with a fair amount of "heart  icons" given --  is WHY do the people that will NOT be using Tilia have to have an account made. 

Because, looking at what Tilia does in relation to Second Life, everyone who ever buys or possibly even uses Linden Dollars will be using Tilia. Actually they already are and have been for some time as several people have already pointed out.

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Y’know, like many others I am kind of on-edge about SL in general. LL has given me good reason to doubt their commitment to User privacy or to deal effectively with issues like stalking.

Why does “we’re creating a whole new administrative bureaucracy that will have your personal information” *not* fill me with joy? Having my details in a whole NEW database that can be breached or mishandled is probably part of it.

As many users are outside the USA and many inside the US use financial services like Privacy.com to keep their personal details PRIVATE - this could lead to a dip in LL’s revenue stream.

Yes, its regulation-driven. I still don’t like it much.

Edited by AmandaKeen
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24 minutes ago, LisaJCobalt said:

Social Security numbers are NOT safe to share unless it's a mortgage company or other financial institution on the same level.

Linden Lab already runs a "financial institution on the same level"; they have to because of the amount of currency they send out. This whole magillah is basically them formally renaming the money-handling part of the business.

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3 minutes ago, AmandaKeen said:

Why does “we’re creating a whole new administrative bureaucracy that will have your personal information” *not* fill me with joy? Having my details in a whole NEW database that can be breached or mishandled is probably part of it.

 

The "whole new administrative bureaucracy" has been around since 2015.

https://modemworld.me/2015/11/04/linden-lab-and-tilia-inc-speculations-on-the-labs-new-subsidiary/

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34 minutes ago, Trin1 said:

If this is like most normal credit processing things, you'll need very little info given to pay money to LL and proper identification to get money from LL. 

So, if I want to buy Linden's, and use them in SL but NOT cash out my Linden's, (meaning convert my Linden's to $USD and transfer to my bank account), then I won't have to provide Tilia with my SS# (or other personal info like utility bills, drivers license, etc)?

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1 hour ago, Chocosis said:

While I can understand the need for photographic government ID for the purposes of Tilia and complying with US law...you've specified that countries outside of the US will require government-given photographic identification.

I'm in the UK. The government doesn't give out photographic identification. The DVLA gives out driving licenses, which are photographic, but not valid under these terms as it's not quite the full government, it's a separated arm of it. Please consider this for creators in other countries, as I don't know the details of Liechtenstein's government, or Sweden, or wherever.

There's also the whole thing where giving Tilia the (what should be) very private information that is your unique identifier as a citizen of your country is a very bad idea. You claim that it is encrypted and secure, but not of how. Sure, the trick to keeping things encrypted is to not tell people how, but I'd like to know at least if you're not just keeping these extremely important documents underneath one layer of probably already cracked security. The US is the exception to this example, since you're using your social security number for...everything. Which is really, really bad. Over here, only three parties should ever get your personal identification number. The government (who gave it to you in the first place, as well as the DWP for tax and benefits purposes), your current employer (if you have one), and you. That's it. Otherwise, that number stays hidden, since anyone with it can fully steal your whole identity. This is why we don't use that number for everything, like the US does. (Though to expand on the UK identity theft, they've gotten a lot better at multiple forms of ID these days, so it's a lot safer in the rare case that you do have that number stolen.)

The point is, your Tilia lawyers will need to check on which forms of photographic ID are valid in what countries. I know that international law is real messy and vague, but it's worth doing. It'll streamline the process for consumers, and won't be so much hassle when trying to identify some Bolivian school club ID as "government-issued".

 

You may also want to reword your news post, as it took me reading this whole thread to understand that the ID was only needed if you cashed out any USD. The news post is vague, and feels as if everyone needs to send in ID. @Leannyn said the same thing not too long ago in this very thread. Fix that, or this thread will get a lot bigger than 12 pages.

 

For the FAQ, or tl;dr:

  • What form of security will our documents be kept under?
  • Will this apply to people who only buy L$? (i know this has been answered in the thread already, but it may as well be in the FAQ too)
  • What will you do for countries whose governments do not give out photographic identification?
  • Do these changes mean no more fees when buying L$?
  • Will Tilia work directly with banks, instead of with PayPal, as using PayPal is an issue for many European and Asian users?
  • Are you supplying sufficient support to the creators, who will likely be the ones most affected by these changes?

I hope you are able to fix this mess.

Nowhere does it mention photographic ID, nor for UK or EU users.

The started requirement is for "government issued ID"

When you recently had the opportunity to vote, some areas were required to take ID. The voting form described what was acceptable in the case of no passport, no driving licence. It's not rocket science.

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