Update: The latest data security breach in Second Life
orignal post here: http://theriseofthesurreal.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/you-think-your-real-life-data-is-kept-safe-by-linden-lab-think-again/
In a nutshell: No substantial action from LL and they claim that someone being able to log in as someone else isn’t a security breach.
The two people who were involved in it talk about it here: http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/general-sl-discussion/37048-new-linden-lab-account-security.html
Two things of interest.
1. Linden Research are not treating it as a security breach (they closed the bug report that was lodged in the security section).
2. Linden Research have a reputation for a lack of attention to detail and sloppy processing of customer issues with no reason given for their actions and no recourse. So much so that people are reluctant to ever give names of someone if they are only peripherally involved as a spectator- simply because LL is likely to take punutive action against the name by cancelling the account.
This second element is remarkable. Despite the quite amazing sums of money people pay to Linden Research for the use of their services there is no guarantee of fair dealing by the company. They have a ToS that effectively states they can do what they want, when they want and you have no recourse. If they decide to close your account they feel they have no obligation to telly you why they have cancelled it, refund you any moneys in the account (they say it’s not real, despite it having been procured with real money) or allow you access to the account to remove any intellectual property you may own.
Apparently they used to have a habit of double billing people and not refunding the account when notified. If you had the temerity to ask your credit card to reverse the second payment Linden Research would suspend or cancel your account until you withdrew the request from the card company.
These days as I understand it they still double bill on occassions and may or may not refund. Unsurprisingly most people don’t go to their credit card providers and complain anymore – despite these double billings sometimes being anything up to 295USD.
Now of course those companies that choose to deal with Linden Research with their new standalone system will possibly not have these problems. I would hope Linden Research are at least smart enough to behave as a professional company does rather than the way they show their distain for their entertainment platform userbase. Sadly companies rarely make their reasons for their dissatisfaction with a company known. I suppose we’ll find out when Linden Lab stop providing statistics to support their claims of success. Which, coincidentaly, they’ve just done with the entertainment platform statistics feed, which can be found here: http://secondlife.com/statistics/economy-data.php note the date on the web page. I must say I found it amusing on many levels..