I recently purchased a donation box and when I rezzed it, SL sent a warning message

[cyn Sapphire]

The message states that the box wants control over my linden account and will have the authority to remove all Lindens from my account.  I have not finished setting up the box because of this message and am wondering if I should delete the box and go to another seller.  Perhaps the box needs access to my account in order to transfer Lindens that are donated.  Just need some advice here.

[Rolig Loon]

You are quite right to be careful.  That warning is ALWAYS there on any scripted object that will need to take money from your account.  Many vendors are scripted to offer a refund or to make change if the user has changed her mind or if there has been an error.  The box itself cannot hold any L$, so it needs to have permission to take L$ from its owner's account to offer that refund. 

So ....  You are the owner of the box, so that's why you got that message.  It's a legitimate request.  Before you use it, however, you should ask yourself whether there is any good reason for you to offer refunds and whether you trust that particular script to do its job honestly.  If the answer is NO to either question, don't use it.

Personally, I see no reason for a donor box or a tip jar to ever give refunds. I rarely see a reason for a vendor to offer them either. (I have scripted quite a number of both over the years, and have only added a refund feature twice that I can recall.)  Also, personally, I will never use a box that asks for PERMISSION_DEBIT unless I created the box myself or bought it from someone with a reputation for honest scripting.  I would NEVER use a box like that if someone gave it to me or if I found it in a freebie collection somewhere.  There's no way to tell whether the script in it is going to take all of the money from my account and send it to someone I do not know.

I would recommend setting that donor box aside and looking for a very simple one that accepts donations but does not offer refunds.

ETA:  Incidentally, just in case it's not clear.... a donation box or tip jar or vendor always deposits its money directly into the owner's account.  So when someone make a donation to your donation box, YOU get the money.  It is not transferred somewhere else unless you have agreed to let it remove money from your account.

[Innula Zenovka]

I agree with Rolig that there's no good reason for a donation box ever to give refunds.

However, there are circumstances when you would want to pay a proportion of a donation to a third party.   Tip jars are an obvious example.   As Rolig says, al the money paid to an object goes direct to the object's owner.  However, usually the owner wants to pay a proportion of that to the performer who is being tipped.   

So in that case, you would set the tip jar so that after it had been used to pay the money it received into the owner's account, it automatically calculated n% of the payment it had just received and took that amount from the owner's account to give to the performer.

As Rolig says, really you need to decide how much you trust whoever made the script.  

[Rolig Loon]

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Innula Zenovka wrote:

[ .... ] However, there are circumstances when you would want to pay a proportion of a donation to a third party.   Tip jars are an obvious example.   As Rolig says, al the money paid to an object goes direct to the object's owner.  However, usually the owner wants to pay a proportion of that to the performer who is being tipped.   [ .... ]

,

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 Ah, yes.  I conveniently forgot about split tip jars.  That is a legitimate reason for needing PERMISSION_DEBIT.  Still, as Innula and I agree, be sure to get the script from someone you can trust. One good way to reduce your own level of anxiety is to buy a full-perm script, if you can get it.  Certainly, if you are commissioning someone to write a script for you, insist on getting a full perm copy.  Then you can examine it yourself and see what it's doing with your cash.

[cyn Sapphire]

Thank you, Rolig! I will take your advice and not use this box. Thank you for the thorough explanation as well.