Email from SL??

[Huntress Catteneo]

I am trying to find out if an email I have recieved is from SL (I strongly suspect not), but can't figure out where the heck to ask or look.  Also want to send word of warning to others in the meantime, to treat with caution themselves.  The email starts out like this:

Dear Resident,

"This email contains important information that affects your Second Life account and requires action in order to continue any payment transactions with Second Life.

Due to the conclusion of the Second Life local payments beta program, it is required that you add a new credit card or PayPal account by going to your billing information page on Secondlife.com.

You must act by Jan. 9 or future Second Life payment transactions will not be processed."


It has numerous links of course to say check here to show it is genuine, which at this point I am certainly not clicking.  Is there a place to report or check on such emails and also warn residents, or is this it?  Of course it is targeted at premium members, the ones LL has just had a big drive to get, so if they now fall for a scam it is not going help keep them.

[Yann Mizser]

Yesterday i received a mail from LL:

---------------

Dear Yann

This email contains important information that affects your Second Life account and requires action in order to continue any payment transactions with Second Life.

Due to the conclusion of the Second Life local payments beta program, it is required that you add a new credit card or PayPal account by going to your billing information page on Secondlife.com.

You must act by Jan. 9 or future Second Life payment transactions will not be processed.

If you have any questions or concerns, please visit our Knowledge Base or reach out toll-free via phone to Linden Lab Support at 1-800-294-1067 (U.S./Canada) or long distance at (703) 286-6277.

Residents in the United Kingdom can reach out to our dedicated toll-free phone number for the United Kingdom: 0800.048.4646.

Best Wishes,

Linden Lab and the Second Life Team

-----------------

Has anyone of you received this mail too? Is this genuine or some fraude attempt?

Cheers,

Yann.

[Eloise Baily]

I strongly suspect that you strongly suspect correctly.

I had one telling me that I wouldn't be able to log in because my payment details had changed.

Funny, as I was inworld at the time and when I went all crashtastic, I got back in no problem.

LL don't send these kind of emails. At all.

If they want you to do something they cancel your account and THEN tell you what they want.

ETA: You could always just type www.secondlife.com into your new tab and go from there. I almost guarantee you won't see the message.

[wiked Anton]

even if it IS genuine, iI NEVER EVER use a link sent in an email. you can always use your own bookmark or type the address and just redo you c/c or paypal......

But if they are sending links i always suspect fraud........here is a FREE email tracker if your unsure and want to know the origin of the email.....

http://www.ip-address.org/lookup/ip-locator.php

 

just copy/paste the full headers in there and buzzinga............

stay safe and enjoy you SL

[Peggy Paperdoll]

The links to the sites all point to non-existant web pages.........that's suspicious.  The phone numbers are legitamate....not suspicious.  My advice is to call Second Life billing and speak to them directly.  They should be able to tell you if the email was sent by Linden Lab and answer if the email is legitamate or fraudulant.

 

I know LL does send emails out for things concerning your billing information...........I get one every quarter about 2 weeks before my payment for my premium membership is due and another once the payment has been recieved by LL.  But all those emails are the "no-reply" type.  Was your email re-reply?

[Yann Mizser]

I recieve most "non-reply" mails from LL, but some of them are plain and they come from the same sender.

Btw, the link do work in my mail (just did a copy/paste from it, that's why the links don't work. Sorry about that) but i didn't used them. Instead, i logged in with my usual link i have in my favorite folder.

I did change my billing settings, as a precaution.

It still feels a bit odd though.

 

[Paris Honi]

I got the same mail and I'm glad to know not just me :-)))

Not sure if its spam or not to be honest because it appears to me its from LL.. We won't know.... Best thing if someone from LL replies to this so we see..

[Peggy Paperdoll]

My guess is that it is a legitamate email from LL.  I know LL is concluding the local payment beta program and the email is a no-reply (or so the OP stated anyway).  The fact that the links I tried pointed to non-existant sites was explained by the OP cutting and pasting.  The phone numbers are numbers for Linden Billing.  If you are concerned then call billing support.....the email even says to call with questions.  That way you get the first hand knowledge from the people who would know.  It's unlikely a Linden will stumble into this thread and answer the question.

[Anjin McMahon]

I got a mail from this adress thuesday, december 13th 2011.

but its no advertizing in it....

read:

Dear Anjin
This email contains important information that affects your Second Life account and requires action in order to continue any payment transactions with Second Life.
Due to the conclusion of the Second Life local payments beta program, it is required that you add a new credit card or PayPal account by going to your billing information page on Secondlife.com.
You must act by Jan. 9 or future Second Life payment transactions will not be processed.
If you have any questions or concerns, please visit our Knowledge Base or reach out toll-free via phone to Linden Lab Support at 1-800-294-1067 (U.S./Canada) or long distance at (703) 286-6277.
Residents in the United Kingdom can reach out to our dedicated toll-free phone number for the United Kingdom: 0800.048.4646.
Best Wishes,
Linden Lab and the Second Life Team

[Catwise Yoshikawa]

so you got that email? Guess everyone hould have it, cause LL change their billing thing last week and didn't tell us.
I found that they remove all my billing info cause I was checking cause my premium finish this month and wanted to be sure everything was ok.

Just go to your billing info in your SL account and check everything is ok ;-)

[Linden Lab]

Hello,

In the past week we did send emails about changes to our payments flow to three small groups of people, from the sender "Second Life" at the address "secondlife@e.secondlife.com"

The subject lines were:

"Please update your payment information to continue transactions with Second Life."

"New Payments System for Second Life"

"Update payment info to continue transactions with Second Life" (also in German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Japanese).

Thanks,
Linden Lab

[Huntress Catteneo]

Just so people know, I didn't JUST look at the email and go is this looks like it may be a spoof what do others think.

I looked for ways to easily contact LL or find in knowledge base etc etc all over the help and contact areas, and could not find anywhere that seemed the right place to ask or that I would get and answer with any speed (I did mention in the beginning I did not know where I could check).

I also looked at other avenues of contact, I am in Australia, the now limited live chat times (and again no idea if that would be a place to ask) are ridiculous for this part of the world, and phone number?? Guess I could have always spent a fortune ringing the US.

I did go into my account, but there was nothing in there anywhere saying I needed to update things or do anything, and to my mind that is a place it should definitely have an alert or message.  There was not way on earth I was just going to update anything there, and am still loath to as I have just been through over a month messing around getting changes fixed on my billing after my credit card renewed and no matter what I did and numerous back and forth with LL it still kept not going through.

Sorry but like most I am sure, I get spoof emails all the time from hotmail, paypal etc, and they always have some genuine links in them, all the right graphics and so on.  At least ones like paypal have a spoof address you send the emails to and they say yes or no if it is from them.

[Jerry Spierwit]

Can you be more specific, Linden Lab Community Manager?? The email in question (I had two now) has every aspect of a phishing mail, whilst there seems nothing wrong in the billing info on my account.

If you want pple to change something, put it on the homepage dashboard and not in a hoax mail. I guess you dont want to loose these pple as customer, do you?

UPDATE: I just had a chat with the helpdesk, and they told me to delete and readd my (same) creditcard. So I did.

[Verena Vuckovic]

Maybe I'm just thick or something....but I don't understand WHY I'm expected to enter 'new' payment details. There's nothing wrong with my credit card, which is actually ( unlike most people....lol ) the only one I have.

How am I supposed to enter 'another' credit card when I DON'T HAVE 'another' credit card. And why the blazes am I being expected to do so in the first place ?

[Huntress Catteneo]

Yes the email does look fake but has of course been confirmed as real.  I also have only the one thing to supply for payment details , and of course the details are already there.  Why do we have to do it?  Like other I have no idea, as the one presented seems stupid and doesn't actually explain why it must be done other than some beta thing finished.  So I guess some bright spark in programming could not work out that the way they set things up could be a problem down the track with the messing up of payment details.  I am sure someone at LL figured it is ok, if people still don't fix the problem WE caused, the will soon figure it out when payments fail etc and finally fix it as we told them to then.  One problem with that thinking, a lot of people get really annoyed with such things and if they then have trouble with payments going through, add that to the list of other stuff and you find they decide to no longer have a 'premium' account, or a private region etc.

As I tried to point out earlier, I have just been though a couple of months of hassle because my credit card managed to get listed twice in the payment section, and payments kept messing up.  There is no way I am going to add my details again and end up back at square one.  I shall try deleting the current one first and the putting that back, so that better be a way that works for the stupid letter thing (very poorly thought through like far too much lately), or I like other may finally decide that's it.

[Verena Vuckovic]

Well......I received a 'reminder' yesterday to enter 'new' payment details by January 9th or........well, I really don't know what the 'or' is or why.

My payment details.....the only ones LInden Lab are getting off me......are already in my account.  Am I supposed to re-enter them or what ? Nothing in the stupid email from LL makes this clear.

If the system cannot cope with the same payment details......that is not and should not be my problem. Any hassle from this and I will simply change to a basic account.

 

 

[Hallie Halsey]

---

Verena Vuckovic wrote:

Well......I received a 'reminder' yesterday to enter 'new' payment details by January 9th or.......

.well, I really don't know what the 'or' is or why.

My payment details.....

the only ones LInden Lab are getting off me

......are already in my account.  Am I supposed to re-enter them or what ? Nothing in the stupid email from LL makes this clear.

If the system cannot cope with the same payment details......that is not and should not be my problem. Any hassle from this and I will simply change to a basic account.

 

 

---

I believe you get booted back to non-premium status.  Yes, just delete your billing info and then re-enter it as a new card.

[Vania Chaplin]

A friend had problems with payment a little time ago (roughly 3 weeks), because here in Brazil Visa has changed its politics on international payments. It seems that for foreign payments, one have first to ask permission to Visa, valid for 3 months.

I don’t have first hand info about this nor know if it is worldwide or applies only to Brazil, but maybe it’s related.

[Jerry Spierwit]

They told me I could reenter the same card. And I did. As far as I know it has something to do with changing from a beta billing system to a live one. But thats just a guess from all the reactions combined. I never received a mail stating that was the case, just the (smelly) mail that I should change my billing info, or else something...

I can imagine that transferring payment data from one system to another without the consent of the owner of that data can't be done (legally), or something of the sort. Anyway, I deleted my data and reentered the same and haven't had an email since.

But for future occasions it might be wise for LL not to make a genuine email look like a phishing mail, with all the weird links and all... I'd fire the corporate communications manager, lol. :matte-motes-sarcasm:

Oh, btw in all fairness: thumbs up for the guy on the live chat. That was fast service.

[Myrian Magic]

So, if an resident has its Rezzday, you send Emails to log in actually?

I was suspecting this email with the "e" in it, was maybe a phishing sender, so I thought i look it up if it´s already known.

"Second Life" <secondlife@ e.secondlife.com>

text:

Happy Rez Day!
Wishing you a wonderful celebration in Second Life.

Log in Now >>

(link)

--------

terms of service stuff and following SL links below

 

i spare the links, as I am stillnot sure if it is not a covered/masked email sender

 

well, i can log in by the viewer, no need to use the link, but i thought i let you know, i don´t had a good feeling about the "simple" text and the- to me- unknown- email sender, as i got spammed with a "log in to get lots of money"  mails by a resident named secondlife1.resident or something similiar a while ago..

greez