SL sign up not working?

[ooJenny]

Hi everyone.  I am trying to create a new account, but on the sign up page, where you input your email, it won't accept any email I put in.  I've tried them all, from tutanota.com to protonmail.com to even gmail.com  and a bunch others in between.  Upon inputting an email address it says in red letters under the input box "hm, that email doesn't look quite right. Please try again"

I suppose it could be a glitch but that would be a pretty major glitch on a sign up page, which is usually pretty basic.  I have to wonder if SL is no longer taking new sign up's or what the case may be.  I did go and submit a support ticket, but that was hours and hours ago, and not a peep yet.   So wondering if anyone knows what might be going on?

Thanks 

 

[Alwin Alcott]

48 minutes ago, ooJenny said:

Hi everyone.  I am trying to create a new account, but on the sign up page, where you input your email, it won't accept any email I put in.  I've tried them all, from tutanota.com to protonmail.com to even gmail.com  and a bunch others in between.  Upon inputting an email address it says in red letters under the input box "hm, that email doesn't look quite right. Please try again"

I suppose it could be a glitch but that would be a pretty major glitch on a sign up page, which is usually pretty basic.  I have to wonder if SL is no longer taking new sign up's or what the case may be.  I did go and submit a support ticket, but that was hours and hours ago, and not a peep yet.   So wondering if anyone knows what might be going on?

Thanks 

 

works fine for me

[Rowan Amore]

Me too.

[Ceka Cianci]

The only thing I can think of is, make sure everything is ok with the email. I've sometimes put a comma where a period should be or did .come on the end before or some easy to miss mistake I've made..

 

 

[cunomar]

VPN security hiding your details and preventing a handshake maybe ?

[Katherine Heartsong]

I am a Proton user for my personal emails, and wanted to check the OPs theory, as a lot of major sites won't allow anyone to sign up using Proton or through a VPN. Instagram, for example, blocks all attempts to create accounts through the major VPN IPs these days, for example. My original sign up two+ years ago was via Proton, btw.

But guess what? At least from Canada, the OP is right.

I tried creating a new SL account this morning using protonmail.com and proton.me, and got the error message they mentioned ... "Hm, that email doesn't look quite right. Please try again" in red letters. So I then what they did, I tried a number of the major anonymous mail site addresses and get same error message. I did not try Gmail since I avoid Google at all costs.

At least from Canada, LL appears to be blocking signups without a "real" email provider and address. As someone who works in a company in the data business, I don't like this. i know LL folks rarely look in here, but what's up with this policy?

Edited March 9, 2023 by Katherine Heartsong

[Love Zhaoying]

I just realized something that bugged me about this particular LL strategy.

Smart or "fancy" people who create their own sites and route their email like this will also fail:  MyName@MyfirstNameMyLastName.com

 

Edited March 9, 2023 by Love Zhaoying

[Katherine Heartsong]

19 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I just realized something that bugged me about this particular LL strategy.

Smart or "fancy" people who create their own sites and route their email like this will also fail:  MyName@MyfirstNameMyLastName.com

Tested and confirmed. You can not use a custom URL. This has to be a glitch.

Edited March 9, 2023 by Katherine Heartsong

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

Tested and confirmed. You can not use a custom URL. This has to be a glitch.

I think it is definitely on purpose, as I've seen lots of posts about it over the years.  It is a klugey "security" method to make sure they do not get signups from dodgey email services that are home-grown to create SPAM / griffer accounts, etc. That's what I recall.

[Katherine Heartsong]

This was reported back in 2021 (bug #231235) and also in January of this year (bug #232936).

In the first they said they were investigating. This year, Spidey Linden said in response "We use multiple reputation services to validate email domains. The workaround is to use a different email domain that is validated. I'm very sorry for the inconvenience."

Sorry, LL, not good enough. Protonmail is a highly recommended and regarded email hosting provider. Also, other privacy focused yet reputable validated email providers are failing. It's broken in some way to prevent users from being less identifiable is the only assumption I can make.

Also ... from a tech point of view ... LL should have access in their account with these reputation providers to whitelist a domain. It should be a 30 second fix to add protonmail.com to that list and hit Save to at least fix this one domain. If they don't, they need to be using better reputation services as their gatekeepers.

Edited March 9, 2023 by Katherine Heartsong

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, Katherine Heartsong said:

This was reported back in 2021 (bug #231235) and also in January of this year (bug #232936).

In the first they said they were investigating. This year, Spidey Linden said in response "We use multiple reputation services to validate email domains. The workaround is to use a different email domain that is validated. I'm very sorry for the inconvenience."

Sorry, LL, not good enough. Protonmail is a highly recommended and regarded email hosting provider. Also, other validated email providers are failing. It's broken in some way.

Right, I remember now, "reputation services".  So many forum, so little times.

Saw a post just last week or so, where someone showed an example HTML response with the "Reputation Score" for whatever email provider they were trying, and compared that to a score on a "scoring site".

 

[Katherine Heartsong]

It's this, @Love Zhaoying for sure. They seem to be using external validation services who do not consider Protonmail et al valid enough on their reputation  scoring system to allow sign ups.

I've filed a JIRA ticket as well https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-233563 and also suggested they need to internally whitelist Protonmail (or get their validation services into the 21st century) to permit some of the more user- and privacy-centric email providers as valid domains.

It's a perception problem LL is creating, it makes them appear to want to have your personally identifiable/marketable info even though that is not the reason why Protonmail is failing. It's a simple fix, but we'll see.

That perception is not addressed well with Spidey's (technically correct) response where he says that "We use multiple reputation services to validate email domains" because it suggests that Protonmail is not a reputable email provider, when, in fact, it's perhaps one of the most trustable and privacy centric email providers in the world, especially compared to Gmail, et al.

Edited March 9, 2023 by Katherine Heartsong

[Katherine Heartsong]

On 3/5/2023 at 10:49 AM, Alwin Alcott said:

works fine for me

 

On 3/5/2023 at 12:00 PM, Rowan Amore said:

Me too.

As demonstrated above, if you try using any name that is from the  @protonmail.com or @proton.me domains, it does not, in fact, work. And I obviously did not create the account shown below, just used the names to this stage to demonstrate.

Edited March 9, 2023 by Katherine Heartsong

[Arwen Serpente]

I just tried it. I have a proton email account that I rarely use, but it is active and does receive and send email. I couldn't set up a new account with it. I got the same "Hmm...that emails doesn't look quite right. Please try again." error message.

[Sid Nagy]

Maybe LL doesn't want new customers. Who knows...

[jeffrey315]

Was helping a friend with their signup today and this is still a major issue.
We tried both of their email addresses, both of which are reputable but smaller ISPs, and both were rejected.
I set up an account at Zoho, and that one was rejected too. Zoho has 80 million users worldwide. What's up with that, Linden Labs?

[jeffrey315]

@oojenny Did you get any response yet on your support ticket?

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

I tried making a test account using my own domain's email addy - got the same response. Hope they fix it.

[Phil Deakins]

I've tried creating an account with two different computers and I conclude that the system is definitely broken. I simply can't create an account no matter what email address I use.

I have around 70 accounts, all using my own domain name for their email addresses, but the system won't accept that domain now. I also tried the widely-used gmail, and a genuine domain name that has never been near SL. Nothing worked and I cannot now create a new account.

Geography may have something to do with it but, whatever the reason is, it is broken.

[steeljane42]

Broken for sure. Just tried and it makes no sense. Used gmail as the domain and put on a random characters and letters to test it out. For example jane4242 works, jane4142 does work too, but jane4342 does not. Same for the other numbers/letters combinations. If there's a patter what the system doesn't want to accept I couldn't really figure it out.

Edited March 10, 2023 by steeljane42

[shireena1]

I gotta admit on reading this, i didn't believe it, but trying out a few random Gmail, Hotmail and Outlook email addresses on the SL sign up page, some worked and some gave me the thumbs down for the email, so something is definitely amiss!

Edited March 10, 2023 by shireena1
edited for clarification

[JUSTUS Palianta]

Its been doing this for more then a year.

[Katherine Heartsong]

Not getting fixed, at least for Protonmail.

"We use multiple reputation services to validate email domains and unfortunately protonmail doesn't meet our standards for valid email addresses. The workaround is to use a different email domain that is validated. I'm very sorry for the inconvenience."

First time I've read something from a Linden employee and actually swore out loud.

If Protonmail doesn't meet your standards, how in the heck does Google? From a user-focused privacy point of view Google leaks like the Titanic because the user is the product. Why'd it meet your standards two years ago? It's what I signed up both me and my male alt with back then. TechRadar, in fact, just listed Protonmail as the "... best email service for privacy and security". It has, as of last year, 70,000,000 users. Doesn't meet your standards? Not sure if I should laugh or cry.

Doesn't meet our standards then clearly means ... we want as much on you data-wise as we can get.

Infuriatingly dumb decision. Sorry, just stupidly mad right now. Starting to feel like @Sid Nagy now about how SL is treating user's privacy, and even caring about us at all.

Edited March 13, 2023 by Katherine Heartsong

[Sid Nagy]

"Good morning sir, I come to fetch my ordered smart TV."

"O yes of course, but wait a second.... is that your car outside? Sorry that car doesn't meet our standards. We once had a few terrible customers that had the same kind of car. No sale. I'm so sorry. Go and buy another car first. Have a nice day."

Great business plan right?

Let's develop a smartphone viewer to see if we can achieve more new customer signups instead.

 

 

 

Edited March 14, 2023 by Sid Nagy

[Love Zhaoying]

I suppose if ProtonMail was a "never heard of it" service, or "we definitely know it's the most widely used email service by spammers and hackers", that's one thing..