[Last Names - Finally Here]

I think many have made very valid points about price and choices so I have nothing to add to that. I will say that my first response to them was oooo these mostly seem so cutesy but having seen how people are actually using them I am quite impressed, especially since they will rotate quite often as I understand it. As for my five cents, I am just thrilled there are more options, anything that allows for even more creative expression in this world of magic is a plus in my book. And generally speaking it has been my experience that customization in SL often costs...

I am super grateful that the first name can be changed too, I was not expecting that at all! When I came to SL I moved over from another grid where it was the convention to have your role-play title as part of your name. So not thinking it through I proceeded to do that here. I think most people didn't automatically think I was a dick trying to get greeted with an honorific but I kinda felt like a newbie prat about it. On top of that they literally ended the last names around that time (it didn't help that I didn't use my account after making it for about 3 month). I had picked a last name that was available for all of four month that I absolutely love (according to SL name watch there are only 828 so it really wasn't that simple in the later days to just fix the mistake)... So from my point of view I am happy that I could spend $40 to correct a nearly 10 year old mistake that had always been nagging at me.

Thank you Linden Labs for spotting there was demand for this and proceeding to do the grunt work to make it happen. I am feeling extra grounded and creative today which in a time like this is truly the most unexpected and wondrous gift. 

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

1 hour ago, StephanieBell said:

One idea, as tracking seems so difficult for SL itself, might be for creators to take the lead on this issue and start to number their gacha items, similar as artists do for limited edition prints?

I am not entirely sure how it would work technically but in an artist's case a limited edition has a fixed number of items in a set. They are marked with 2 numbers, the unique number of the print and the size of the print run ( ie 1/1000 or 149/40,000).  If someone needed to release more they could do a 1/1000B? 

A thought anyways. 

 

I don't know if the gacha machine scripts will be able to handle that because currently they hand out items based on percentage odds but if every one of the items had to be individually loaded that could be trouble when we are discussing thousands of items.

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

Well they are evolving I just had a purchase made by a 1 day old avi who sent it as a gift to another 1 day old avi and then the second one day old avi proceeded  to make a direct purchase for the item again. 🤪

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

1 minute ago, GrandDukeDylan Rothmoor said:

Some kind soul should contact these people to see if they also have had Linden adjustments! 😉

The problem is, if we do it as citizens of Second Life it will turn into a witch hunt because most of the time we just have circumstantial evidence. Where as Linden Lab who can actually track the items through their unique numbers can get actual proof. So I am personally not going to engage in this time consuming and potentially community destroying activity. We must continue to pressure LL to take steps to bring this platform into 2020 where it belongs. 

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

(Quote removed)

Some kind soul should contact these people to see if they also have had Linden adjustments! 😉

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

37 minutes ago, Nikilei said:

My online store was hit again. This is the 4th time since January. I unlisted all but the cheapest items and thinking that the criminal had been caught, relisted everything a week ago. They hadn't been and I was hit again yesterday [2/10].  Would it be safer to sell in-world only where there is a record of who stops in your store and there isn't the option to buy as a gift?

How do you protect yourself from having your accounts hacked? Is it safe to give out an http address to someone else  inworld if they ask for one? I had someone ask for this so they could find an item in my MP store-I didn't give it out as I thought it was strange request. But, I can't protect myself if I don't know how this happens in the first place. I know the obvious about not giving out passwords but is there anything else I can do? I don't want to be a victim to this in the future and I am tired of being a victim to this person who keeps stealing from me. 

I am not sure what made you think they had caught the culprit. The only change that happened was that LL opened a direct channel for us to get our adjustments returned promptly. We have had no update on 1) how the phishing is occurring (so much so that the larger SL public is hardly even being warned about a new type of phishing scam) 2) if there is anything we can do to help LL catch the offender(s) 3) what they intend to do to make it harder for the offender to continue this scam (I strongly believe this needs to be two tier verification so we can cut off the money supply) and 4) where is all the stolen stuff? (is there a black market mega store I don't know about?). I have chosen to relist with the assumption I will continue to get hit but that LL will refund me in such fraudulent cases. Essentially as long as they are agreeing to refund me I am agreeing to be patient with them for long term solutions and to have the extra job of filing tickets and keeping in touch with other resellers. I suggest you do what makes you comfortable, I do not have an Inworld store and never wanted one but many do and some have chosen for peace of mind to stop selling on the MP until LL implements changes. As I am a decorator and am always looking for specific things I was super upset about this situation causing so many resellers to delist as it meant I would probably need to hunt for the items I wanted inworld. I have adjusted though and send my shopping list to the resellers I know. That seems to be working. So I think we will all adjust accordingly. I truly hope LL's saves the MP, but I will enjoy my Second life in spite of this! I think we can be both grateful to the tremendous efforts of Kristin and Patch but at the same time be rightfully disappointed at the Labs for knowing about these security risks in 2017 and not finding solutions then. 

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

4 hours ago, GrandDukeDylan Rothmoor said:

I had another Linden adjustment yesterday for a purchase from the 2/2/2020. I have opened a new case hopefully it will be resolved promptly. I still stand with what I have been saying from the start. The Labs need to implement two tier verification as fast as possible. We need to cut off these criminals from the money. No money no incentive.

Super fast resolution from Kristin and the team!

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

I had another Linden adjustment yesterday for a purchase from the 2/2/2020. I have opened a new case hopefully it will be resolved promptly. I still stand with what I have been saying from the start. The Labs need to implement two tier verification as fast as possible. We need to cut off these criminals from the money. No money no incentive.

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

27 minutes ago, MarquisdeSadeJustine said:

Haven’t heard from Akira Mistwood, rasterscan, nikilei, tonk tomcat, xharay, fneil8, & lulu frue as to whether or not they got there refunds. I hope their aware of the update! I’ll find them inworld and let them know. 

How many of you re-listed your MP? I’m still nervous to. 

 

All the solutions we have discussed in this forum will without question take the Labs time to discuss and even longer to implement. As long as they are keeping this dedicated channel open for us to file wrongful adjustments I will be listing. So we now have a bit of extra paper work to do.... I can live with that 😁

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

1 minute ago, sashaspooky said:

I must admit, I am confused.  I see people are saying their tickets have been looked at and the accounts reassessed and money returned.  Are the people getting their money back owners of hacked accounts used to buy things on MP or owners of the stores that have had item bought? 

The people who had their accounts hacked were getting their money back in the initial adjustment the problem was that the resellers lost the money and were never returned their gacha. Now LL has decided to refund the sellers too.

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

1 hour ago, Dessi Tyran said:

I had have mine returned to me as well;

Your case has been escalated to me for further review. I am sorry to hear about issues you’ve encountered regarding some recent Linden Dollar assessments from your account.

After conducting a secondary review, we have reversed the assessments totaling L$????? from your account between the dates of 12/21/2019 - 2/2/2020. This should now be reflected in your Linden Dollar balance.

We apologize for any frustration and inconvenience this may have caused, and are working on improving this process to reduce the negative impact on our Residents.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions or need further assistance.

Sincerely,
Kristin Linden

Thank you to all the Lindens involved in this reversal. I am deeply appreciative. Even though, we have raised our voices this time. This still remains a consistent; serious flawed policy. I will be more diligent in paying attention to this forum and what is happening within not only the gacha community but its entirety. We all take time away from our families for either fun, business or otherwise and everyone deserves to be treated fairly; especially when it comes to compensation against fraudulent MP purchases. I am thrilled to see others receiving reversed assessments. 

For now, we are being appeased with reversals please do not give up on policy reviews / changes. As previously stated in submitting my state driver's license and social card to Linden Labs for verification. I would also support 2FA for additional protection against thief.

I also feel we need to have a new flag that alerts Lindens to copybotted content. As it is now, there is no real good choice for reporting what we find in terms of copybotting. Fraudulent MP purchases are hurtful to all of us but so is copybotting. Anytime we have a BIG gacha event I see them more than I do fraudulent MP purchases. As someone else said, it ruins the market. The market is our bread and butter and without the market Linden Labs takes a huge pay cut.

 

 

@Dessi Tyran I am a tad ignorant what exactly is the modern copybot scam ie are people copy botting gacha and selling them at very low prices on the MP? How easy is it for them to create a flawless copy these days? (I assume if people kept finding defects and contacted the person they thought was the original designer the scammer would be exposed quite quickly and presumably this is a long term gig).

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

2 minutes ago, Tanja Byron said:

I agree, for example you not only have to enter your account data but also the associated email address to register on MP

It is even simpler then that I think Tanja, when any person tries to buy Linden Dollars they should have to put in their password and get sent a verification code to their email on record or phone. cut off the Lindens and the scammers won't even be coming on the MP

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

3 minutes ago, connorboy26 said:

I can't make the meeting, but these are my suggestions if someone from LL reads this, or if someone wants to share at the meeting.

A separate Insurance program should be in place for sellers who sell transfer/ no copy items.

This could be in the way of;

1) A small percentage of commission from all MP  transferable item sales be set aside to set up an insurance fund for people who lose an item through fraudulent activity. I think with the hike in commission rates, this should already be included for no extra cost at this time.

2) An option at the time of selling where the seller can select the option if they wish to purchase insurance for a small fee. This option allows us not to worry about smaller priced items, but allows us the option to cover rare items and full sets if we choose.

The current climate for resellers has highlighted just how unsafe our investment is. If LL provide the platform, and can't guarantee security, then they could at least provide an option of insurance to avoid sellers having to take listings down or lose money/ items.
Some sellers were hit harder than others, and while i personally could endure this hit, I do not believe the current system is fair.

Thanks for your consideration
connor

And I think the most important thing is two stage verification because if it becomes much harder for scammers to get hold of people's Linden all the other scams sort themselves out pretty much...

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

I am still not relisting my MP things though until they start doing this for all let us know what measures they have implemented... Awesome for you though Marquis!

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

1 minute ago, MarquisdeSadeJustine said:

UPDATE:

I just received my reversed charges back from linden support!  As a group we have made our voices heard and I thank you all. Please post when you receive your reversed charges back. We still have mountains to move though, this cant happen again to anyone...ever. LL needs to implement proper security so we are all safe to sell our products. I do thank LL for listening and doing whats right for the honest people on second life.

Much appreciated. 

 

Please post the email here

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

2 minutes ago, sashaspooky said:

When I am shopping for a specific item, I will use my area search typing in the designers name and it will bring up all the items in that vicinity. then I just click on the item and zoom in on it. Doing this saves a lot of time, since big malls will have stores offering the same items for different prices.  With that in mind, when I set up my shop/mall area I tried to group all the sets for specific designers in one building.  Using boards and price boxes, I can put thousands of gachas out without eating up the prims. 

I do area searches too but still have to 1) wait for these enormously packed sims to load 2) Sim hop to a whole bunch of sims. The MP is convenient. Cool idea with the grouping.

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

On a proactive note: There are many Gacha groups in SL however in most the sellers just post links to their MP stores or locations to their shops (and then close down the group chat window). I, like quite a few I know, do not want to run around enormous yard sales or sims with gacha stores to find specific items I want. I am inclined to create a new group where buyers can post for the specifics they are looking for and get IMs from sellers. And sellers can list off a couple of their items for sale and state IM me for a notecard with my complete offerings or the like. 

I am primarily a buyer not a major reseller like many of you however if it wasn't for you guys and your vast inventories on MP I would have to spend so much more time hunting down items i want.

If this idea resonates with you or if you have any suggestions please send me a NC or IM Inworld so we can keep this forum primarily focused on the main topic (kinda hypocritical I know but I want to find a way forward!). Please don't leave SL big resellers! You have made life so much sweeter for decorators like me.
 

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

1 minute ago, Alma Draegonne said:

I am removing all the items that can be goodies for these thieves, it is bad for me because the store will remain empty, but I am not willing to continue feeding them

Yup the more LL sees MP sales drop the more their bottom line is affected and the more incentive they have to act. They have shareholders wait until they have to explain that because they had no fail safes in place a few scammers were able to cause a large number of re-sellers to delist and that is why quarterly profits fell 5% Sansar is already a very big cash gobbler haha

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

14 minutes ago, Alma Draegonne said:

But they connect in the world to buy, I have already contacted more than one while they bought me. As they are exaggerated amounts of money, I immediately check them and see that they are sending things to new accounts. More than once they were connected because I spoke to them, one even thanked me for the items ...

Well if that is the case then the only solution is for some kind of verification code and even if the Lab is willing to do that there is no way they will implement it very quickly so ya MP is dead to me right now (and of course they could go sim hopping to buy gacha but that will make their scamming much more time consuming I would think so that certainly would make it less attractive for them. The MP is a quick and easy candy store that allows them to filter based on price). 

Your move Linden Labs your move...

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

7 minutes ago, Alma Draegonne said:

But he can have the "pirate account" offline, send things as he buys them, and then connect to pick up. He doesn't have to be online to receive the items

Correct but the scammer will have to be sure the person isn't logged on then. Plus if they do log on first and find all the stuff they might quickly change their password. The point is it makes it a little more difficult not much more but every bit helps.

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

Allowing for the gift option to be disabled will not entirely solve the problem of course it just makes the scam harder as they will not only have to hack the account but also be logged into that account Inworld so they can send the items manually to their alts. No doubt the scammer will adapt but the more difficult it becomes for them to do this scam the more likely they are to look for another unlawful gig. That is why in an earlier post I said that allowing the gift option toggle to store owners should be the immediate step to stop the heavy bleeding and that LL will need to look into two tier verification for purchasing Linden such as an email or SMS with a verification code as has become common online. 

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

7 minutes ago, sashaspooky said:

I have had my MP store for about a year with no problems until the last few days.  From last Wed (1.29/2020) was the first fraudulent purchase.  The next was Friday (1/31) and the 3rd and 4th were yesterday (2/2).  In total $L15,114 worth of full gacha sets were taken.  I lost not only the sets but also the money that was paid for them.  So while they close down the account used by the hacker, chances are it was an Alt account and the prime account holder would just create a new alt to continue the hacking.  I am happy the people who's accounts were hack did recover the money, but unfortunately I am left with no recourse.  After the first event, I check all the email notices I get from MP sales and as with the previous sales it showed the account holder bought the sets and sent them to another person.  I did a search and discovered that while the account holder had been a member for around 7 years, the one receiving the gift was 1 day old.  I contacted both parties, first to ask the account holder if she did buy the items, and she had no knowledge of it.  I advised her to contact the fraud division at LL and report it.  That is in the works as I type.  Next I contacted the person who got the gift, and he gave me a story of working for someone who asked him to buy these sets and that that person was going to buy them from him.  He gave the the name of the person who he said asked him to buy the sets.  I then contacted that person and he claimed the person I have gotten the story from, had contacted him and offered to supply him with gacha items.  This person said he refused. Not surprisingly that first contact had also offered to supply me with gachas that I would like as well, I too refused. I then gathered the names of the people involved and gave that info to the account holder so she would have it for the fraud report.  

While messaging the account holder, I receive a new message from another MP store owner, who tells me this first person I confronted (hacker) had told her that he was selling the stolen items to me.  At that point I sent her a copy of the message I had with the hacker.   This Mp store owner tells me this hacker had hit her store for around $L8,000 worth of items. She sends me the message the hacker sent her which showed he thought what he was doing was funny and said it did not matter if they closed down his account, he would be back tomorrow.  

From what I understand this hacker is targeting full sets and rares, these items I have taken off my MP listings.  I would suggest anyone who has an MP store do the same, since I have no doubt that this wiseguy is out trolling for his next victim.  I would suggest that if you have email notifications of your mp store sales sent, check them and if it is something sent as a gift, check those names out.  If one shows that it is just a few days old, notify the account holder, the sooner a report is made, the harder it is for the hacker to succeed.  Be careful of you account, the person who was robbed last night told me her RL bank account was drained of $300 and her dashboard showed that money was used to buy Lindens.

My request to Linden Labs is that they make a slight change to the MP listing feature that could disable the gift giving option for transferable items,  By doing that it would stop the hackers ability to send items to themselves from hacked accounts.  It would not be that much of an inconvenience to a true buyer, they could just give it to the person from inside SL and if by chance a hacked item was bought, it would go to the account holders inventory and could then be returned for refund. 

I would also suggest to Linden Labs that instead of just closing down the hackers account, that they investigate the ip address used for that account and ban all accounts from that address from  SL.  This would effectively shut down the hackers prime account and all his alts.  If he tried to sign in from a different location, he would find that everything is gone.

Thanks for this. As others have pointed out the IP solution will not work unfortunately. 

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

47 minutes ago, Pamela Galli said:

If you have not already done so, start a thread for names on VVO.

Nope because until we have any reason to suspect otherwise those people whose avatars are hijacked are just as much victims as us they are merely a host for a day and by the time we block them the damage has already been done. The hijacker is doing a quick shopping spree because they do not know when their victim will try to log in again. What I would like to do is reach out to some of these victims and ask them how they got hacked because the how is what we should be spreading so that there can be less victims (if anyone knows how they are hacking these people please say so).

And as others have said in protest and to protect ourselves we must delist whatever we cannot afford to loose from the MP until LL comes back to us with a pragmatic solution and if they cannot then we must all reasses the best way to proceed. I do not own an inworld store and never wanted one but if that is the route I must go so be it. As a decorator I am not going to stop buying gacha, working with resellers and needing to sell off stuff I am no longer using and I am sure many resellers have no desire to stop selling in SL entirely. LL's stands to loose the most here because they get a big 10% commission from this and there will unlikely be a need for much more Land even if most of us only sell in world. The resellers are the only way LL gets a cut on gachas as it it is because the creators sell everything on their MP's except those. Also many SL designers have better prices and discounts inworld then on their MP stores so more and more business is moving Inworld or to events (just as LL was trying to clean up the MP and increased their commission so that they could start to diversify their income model away from Land). 

Please LInden Labs it is Monday we want to be your partner and work with you; find a way to sort this out.

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

48 minutes ago, chasiopeya said:

I was contacted this morning @StephanieBell about what was going on in the gacha seller comunity. I had no idea so far. But I start to think, after reading thru the whole discussion, that maybe someone is just buying expensive items and then screems fraud. We should expose them and talk names, so we all can protect ourselves from further damages and ban everybody questionable. Since LL is not doing anything.

There have been at least 3 different old avatars that have been hacked and 3 different newbies that have been gifted so though I am sure it is probably only one or two people doing the hacking and owning all of these alts it won't help us to block the initial victims. I would love to know how he is getting their passwords though we should be spreading the word about that so we can minimize those who get hacked.

["Linden Dollar assessment"?]

Not sure how naming people works here but I just had a purchase made by someone whose avatar is 8 years old and online (not responding to IMs) and the item was delivered to an avatar who is a day old. This seems extremely organized surely LL's can see it's the same few people via their IP address. Why are they not putting a permanent ban on them.