LS Disappeared from my account and LL doesn't help

[MyShapes]

Hello Everyone,

I hope to your enlighten me a little cause LL didn't and I don't understand why.

As a creator in SL I managed ro save up a few lindens from my Marketplace sales which I transfered for safety (what an irony) in a younger account of mine.

This happened a few years back while I was still active with my Shop. A year ago that I remember checking my web page of the younger account my money were there. On December I logged in to check again and my account had 0L !

Apart from the transfers I made from my main to my second accound there were also earnings in there from the youngest's Marketplace. All gone.

I made 3 tickets so far to LL but I always get the reply that there is no transaction history and they are so sorry for my furstration etc etc. I never got an exlanation about what happened. (Please note that I had the account logged out most of the time so it couldn't be hacked).

Something similar happened to anyone? I am eagerly waiting for your advice, what can i do?

 

[Rolig Loon]

13 minutes ago, MyShapes said:

I am eagerly waiting for your advice, what can i do?

My guess is that you can't do anything. Linden Lab isn't in business to annoy people by losing their L$, so I'm sure that they tried to find a record of your transactions. If they can't find one, all they could do is take your word that your alt used to have L$ in the account.  That's not very likely to happen.

Edited February 16, 2020 by Rolig Loon

[Alwin Alcott]

12 minutes ago, MyShapes said:

what can i do?

not a lot i'm affraid
if you'r premium L$ transactions are saved for 90 days.. as basic only 32 ... if you didn't log in to save it, you have nothing proving your case.
 

[MyShapes]

Thank you both for your answers!

 

The thing is that my marketplace earnings are missing too and there are those reports of my sales that prove that lindens entered my account. 

Do you really thing LL keeps no data of us users since the day we register?

They never mention in any of my tickets that I should be following my account and I lost them of inactivity. There was no explanation at all and that was the most annoying of all. I would sincerelly understand If that was the case but it isn't.

 

[Alwin Alcott]

28 minutes ago, MyShapes said:

there are those reports of my sales that prove that lindens entered my account. 

Do you really thing LL keeps no data of us users since the day we register?

thing is.. you have proof of your earnings, but there is no proof of you not spending it in the period that are lost in the logs.

And we can think a lot.. but fact is sadly in this case, that it's clearly stated how long the logs about the L$ are saved for us.

[MyShapes]

I am sure they even know the breath we take while in SL  but nmv..

I will simply never bother with this "game" again.

Thnak you for your time and replies really

[Lindal Kidd]

Hi, @MyShapes!

I'm sorry you've had this problem.  There is one very likely cause.  If you belong to any groups in which your group role has "Share in group dividends and group liabilities" enabled, that group can take a small amount from you every so often to pay for group expenses, like a Show in Search fee.  Over time, this can slowly deplete an unused account.  See my blog post, "Disappearing Dollars".

The Transaction History does show all your monetary transactions, but only keeps data for 30 days...or 90 days, for Premium members.  Your account requires your active supervision, especially if you are a merchant with an active Marketplace.  You can come to this website once a month and download your Transaction History to a spreadsheet-readable file...but if you fail to do that, the data is lost forever.  It's a pretty small effort to keep track of your business!

The most likely explanation is not that you've been hacked, or robbed.  It's much more likely that your money has slowly dribbled away, because you failed to pay attention.

 

[Alwin Alcott]

7 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

There is one very likely cause.  If you belong to any groups in which your group role has "Share in group dividends and group liabilities" enabled, that group can take a small amount from you every so often to pay for group expenses, like a Show in Search fee.  Over time, this can slowly deplete an unused account. 

i agree with this, but OP's post makes it, for me, sound like it's about a quite serious amount of money, and thats nearly impossible with just group dividends .. for example, show in search is 30L weekly.. thats roughly 6 usd a year when paing the full amount at one account.

So if OP wants to clear it a bit for us... what amount are we talking about?...

[MyShapes]

It was about 200000 till the last time I checked from the web page...

I was only in a few popular creator groups and mostly offline, thats why I can't believe I got hacked.

[Lindal Kidd]

$L200,000!?  That does put a different slant on it.

Do you remember ever following a link posted in a group chat to an LL sign-in page?  If so, you may have fallen for a phishing attack.

[animats]

From the LL Tilia terms of service:

If you have complaints with respect to any aspect of the money transmission activities provided by Tilia, you may contact the California Department of Business Oversight at its toll-free telephone number, 1-866-275-2677, by e-mail at consumer.services@dbo.ca.gov, or by mail at Department of Business Oversight, Consumer Services, 1515K Street, Suite 200, Sacramento, CA 95814.

That's a good place to start. LL/Tilia has to respond to the California Department of Business Oversight with something much better than "we don't know what happened to the money".

LL chose to enter the financial services business, and that makes them subject to oversight. Whether the LL unit or the Tilia  unit is to blame is something the regulators can help sort out.

Edited February 18, 2020 by animats

[Rolig Loon]

30 minutes ago, animats said:

That's a good place to start. LL/Tilia has to respond to the California Department of Business Oversight with something much better than "we don't know what happened to the money".

True, but if there is no record that the money ever existed, I think the burden will be on the OP to produce something more than "It was about 200000 till the last time I checked from the web page..." .  Otherwise, the claim will come off looking like an attempt to scam LL.

 

 

[animats]

25 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

True, but if there is no record that the money ever existed, I think the burden will be on the OP to produce something more than "It was about 200000 till the last time I checked from the web page..." .  Otherwise, the claim will come off looking like an attempt to scam LL.

There must be a transaction journal somewhere within LL/Tilia which shows the money going in and out of the account. There are retention record requirements on such things. Welcome to the world of accounting law for financial institutions.

[Rolig Loon]

8 minutes ago, animats said:

There must be a transaction journal somewhere within LL/Tilia which shows the money going in and out of the account. There are retention record requirements on such things.

Exactly.  I'm just saying that if there is in fact no record, the OP is screwed. it's basically his word against LL's that the L$ ever existed.  There is also the matter of the TOS (Sect 3.1), which says that "You acknowledge that Linden Dollars are not currency or any type of currency substitute or financial instrument, and are not redeemable for any sum of money from Linden Lab at any time."  So, unless the OP has actually sold L$ to other residents and put USD into his account, all he lost was "game tokens", which have no monetary value.

[animats]

11 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Exactly.  I'm just saying that if there is in fact no record, the OP is screwed. it's basically his word against LL's that the L$ ever existed.  There is also the matter of the TOS (Sect 3.1), which says that "You acknowledge that Linden Dollars are not currency or any type of currency substitute or financial instrument, and are not redeemable for any sum of money from Linden Lab at any time."  So, unless the OP has actually sold L$ to other residents and put USD into his account, all he lost was "game tokens", which have no monetary value.

LL can say that, but it may not hold water in court or in arbitration or with a financial regulator. Some cryptocurrency issuers and exchanges have made similar claims in the past. It didn't help them.

IRS guidance:

Virtual currency is a digital representation of value, other than a representation of the U.S. dollar or a foreign currency (“real currency”), that functions as a unit of account, a store of value, and a medium of exchange.  Some virtual currencies are convertible, which means that they have an equivalent value in real currency or act as a substitute for real currency.  The IRS uses the term “virtual currency” in these FAQs to describe the various types of convertible virtual currency that are used as a medium of exchange, such as digital currency and cryptocurrency.  Regardless of the label applied, if a particular asset has the characteristics of virtual currency, it will be treated as virtual currency for Federal income tax purposes. 

There's been some recent controversy over whether Fortnite's game currency is a virtual currency under that definition. The IRS recently issued guidance that it is not, because you can't cash it out into dollars. Since Linden Lab buys back Linden Dollars for US dollars, and quotes a price for doing so, they can't claim Linden Dollars are "valueless". A decade ago, you might have been able to make that claim, but not today. There are many new money-like things right now, from gift cards to cryptocurrencies to game tokens, and these issues have come up before. It's pretty much settled that if you can convert it into dollars, it has value for tax purposes. That makes it very tough to claim it's valueless for theft purposes.

[Pamela Galli]

4 minutes ago, animats said:

Since Linden Lab buys back Linden Dollars for US dollars

It does?

Edited February 18, 2020 by Pamela Galli

[Rolig Loon]

1 minute ago, Pamela Galli said:

It does?

Nope.  The LindeX is a currency exchange, not a central bank.  Linden Lab does not buy your L$$ or sell you new ones.  You are always trading with other residents.  LL makes its money from the fees it changes to manage the exchange but is not otherwise a party to the actual transactions.  And Tilia only deals with USD.  They never see L$.

[Lindal Kidd]

I think LL/Tilia may be able to dodge the oversight requirements, too...when we are talking about $L, tokens "with no intrinsic value" according to LL.

[Cindy Evanier]

7 minutes ago, BlooZWaters said:

Hello, I was at a VooDoo Sploder event.   When I received the message that I had been paid $5L,  I INSTEAD was CHARGED 25L.   Before the sploder ended, my account balance was L331.  And, immediately when I received the message that I was paid, my balance went to L306.

What you describe is a completely different issue to what the OP in this thread reports.

[MyShapes]

On 2/17/2020 at 9:28 PM, Lindal Kidd said:

$L200,000!?  That does put a different slant on it.

Do you remember ever following a link posted in a group chat to an LL sign-in page?  If so, you may have fallen for a phishing attack.

No, I was barely online from that account, only to set up a few products in the MP and then logged off again. Thats why I don't believe I got hacked

 

On 2/18/2020 at 4:47 AM, Rolig Loon said:

Exactly.  I'm just saying that if there is in fact no record, the OP is screwed. it's basically his word against LL's that the L$ ever existed.  There is also the matter of the TOS (Sect 3.1), which says that "You acknowledge that Linden Dollars are not currency or any type of currency substitute or financial instrument, and are not redeemable for any sum of money from Linden Lab at any time."  So, unless the OP has actually sold L$ to other residents and put USD into his account, all he lost was "game tokens", which have no monetary value.

I am opening tickets trying to communicate with LL since December. I wouldn't be bothering since then If i wanted just to  mess up with LL trying to get money I never owned.

I am 100000% sure they keep records of everything not just the 30 or 90 days we are allowed to see. And since I didn't clicked on anything suspicious I can even imagine that its probably even an error of LL system?

The thing is that I believe that they could help if they wanted to, they have the data to do it.

[Qie Niangao]

On 2/18/2020 at 5:14 AM, BlooZWaters said:

Hello, I was at a VooDoo Sploder event.   When I received the message that I had been paid $5L,  I INSTEAD was CHARGED 25L.   Before the sploder ended, my account balance was L331.  And, immediately when I received the message that I was paid, my balance went to L306.

As @Cindy Evanier points out, this is quite different from the OP's question, but Lindal's original answer is a likely candidate for your case because if you won L$5 and then the standard parcel search-listing fee of L$30 books against your account, you'll be out exactly L$25. Could be land you own yourself, or land owned by a group (although in this L$30 case, it would need to be a group with about the same number of search-listed parcels as it has members). As to the sploder, you can't be charged by a scripted device unless you grant it "Debit" permission, which involves agreeing to a quite distinctive and scary-looking confirmation dialog. (I don't know for sure that Voodoo never does that; based on other practices I wouldn't put it past them, but I think you'd notice if they did.)

Now, to the OP:

On 2/16/2020 at 2:41 PM, MyShapes said:

(Please note that I had the account logged out most of the time so it couldn't be hacked).

Why would you think logging out affects the account's vulnerability to hacking? I guess it's theoretically possible that a "man in the middle" could hijack a logged-in session, but that would depend on some pretty exotic network conditions. It is much more likely that somebody who already knows the account password (such as the account holder) fell for a phishing scam, logged the account into what only looked like a Linden site, and some time later those credentials were used login and drain the account. Despite FinCEN's best efforts, bad guys must still have ways to launder stolen cashed-out L$s, so even if the Lab retained records of L$ transactions in perpetuity, they'd be useless.

[MyShapes]

On 2/19/2020 at 3:41 PM, Qie Niangao said:

As @Cindy Evanier points out, this is quite different from the OP's question, but Lindal's original answer is a likely candidate for your case because if you won L$5 and then the standard parcel search-listing fee of L$30 books against your account, you'll be out exactly L$25. Could be land you own yourself, or land owned by a group (although in this L$30 case, it would need to be a group with about the same number of search-listed parcels as it has members). As to the sploder, you can't be charged by a scripted device unless you grant it "Debit" permission, which involves agreeing to a quite distinctive and scary-looking confirmation dialog. (I don't know for sure that Voodoo never does that; based on other practices I wouldn't put it past them, but I think you'd notice if they did.)

Now, to the OP:

Why would you think logging out affects the account's vulnerability to hacking? I guess it's theoretically possible that a "man in the middle" could hijack a logged-in session, but that would depend on some pretty exotic network conditions. It is much more likely that somebody who already knows the account password (such as the account holder) fell for a phishing scam, logged the account into what only looked like a Linden site, and some time later those credentials were used login and drain the account. Despite FinCEN's best efforts, bad guys must still have ways to launder stolen cashed-out L$s, so even if the Lab retained records of L$ transactions in perpetuity, they'd be useless.

I never received a mail for a transaction or sale of lindens or any other alerting event. And noone knows my paswords, why would I i share my password with anyone? Especially  the password of the account I saved up my lindens! It doesn't make any sense now, does it? It was MY alternative account. I made it, which account holder are you reffering to? I am sorry I don't get your point there.

Thats why I asked LL help to figure out what happened but unfortunately they shut me down. There must be something. Lindens just don't disapear without a trace! 

 

 

[BlooZWaters]

Hello, I was at a VooDoo Sploder event.   When I received the message that I had been paid $5L,  I INSTEAD was CHARGED 25L.   Before the sploder ended, my account balance was L331.  And, immediately when I received the message that I was paid, my balance went to L306.