Linden Lab Official:Scams
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Important: Only Linden Lab employees can update this page, so rest assured this information comes direct from Linden Lab. |
Buying Linden dollars
Buy Linden Dollars from a trusted source, such as Linden Lab or approved L$ resellers. Be extremely careful when purchasing anywhere else, especially if the wording sounds too good to be true. As P.T. Barnum allegedly said, "There's a sucker born every minute" Scammers prey on your uncertainty and greed when trying to defraud you, so do your research beforehand and save yourself a lot of trouble. If a scammer tricks even a handful of people, that gives them confidence to expand their scam.
See also How to buy Linden dollars.
Inworld vendor scams
Unscrupulous Residents can sometimes steal your Linden dollars by placing invisible prims over a scripted vending object, or by interfering with the data being passed between scripted objects. Report any such activity as abuse. See Filing an abuse report.
In cases where someone not involved in a deal intercepts payments, or causes a script to make fraudulent payments, Linden Lab will attempt to identify the abuser, and apply discipline as appropriate.
Separately, Linden Lab may be able to recover some or all lost Linden dollars, and return them to the correct Residents. Any restitution depends primarily on the recovery of lost Linden dollars from the abuser's account.
Beware of these scammers!
When viewing a scammer's posts, click the Abuse Report link (either on the left of a thread or below a post). Keep in mind that scammers disguise under different identities, and that this is not a 100% comprehensive list, but blatant abusers to avoid. However, the practices on this page are broadly useful.
- "eingee" aka "eveonlinez" - See example scam ad. Repeatedly spamming the blogs.secondlife.com forums under different accounts and trying to circumvent Linden Lab's blocks, in the process causing a lot of pain for our Residents. It should be obvious such desperate and disruptive behavior is a red warning flag that they're scammers. We've blocked their direct hyperlinks so they are trying different combinations (like this) to get around.
- "gamesker" - Similar wording to eingee as noticed here. Has tried to post images to circumvent word filters on the new community.secondlife.com site.
Forum-specific questions
About the Second Life forums.
What should I do if I see or suspect a scammer?
Abuse-report their post by clicking the Report abuse link in the left of the thread or underneath a post so that Linden moderators will see it. Many independent reports from multiple Residents who all think it's a scam helps escalate it to our attention, so the scammers can be banned.
Remember, scammers can't take your money if you don't give them business. Ignore their pleas for attention, and you can reply, telling other Residents to beware (with our Discussion Guidelines in mind). But don't direct-link to their sites, it gives them traffic and leaves others vulnerable — this is especially dangerous with phishing attacks.
Why can I post only once every two minutes?
This was added to deter mass-spamming from scammers. We think it's a reasonable limit that shouldn't really detract from actual conversation. However, like other spam-combating methods, it's subject to change.
Why did my post get moderated?
If you see this message:
- Please note, your discussion will need to be approved by a moderator before it will be viewable by others.
Posts matching certain keywords and criteria may be automatically flagged for Linden moderation and not posted unless approved. This is different from reporting a post as abusive, which requires our human intervention to moderate. We can't disclose the exact criteria, since that would allow spammers to figure out how to be unblocked.
As we continue to change things behind-the-scenes to make the process target more scam-spam and less legit posts, we're sorry if your post accidentally gets caught in the net. If so, please wait until a Linden next checks the queue and approves it.
See also
- Account Credentials Knowledge Base article.
- Preventing the Most Common Scam Methods - Best practices from MMObay that generally also apply in SL.