I was recently suspended from Second Life for 5 LONG days. by Linden Labs. I was absolutely horrified, having had no warning that this might happen at all.
Now that my account has been re-activated, I really want to give a breakdown of what happened, so that none of you get into the same difficulties I had. I'm not sure if LL would be happy about me doing this, (another suspension perhaps?) but I'm sure they WOULD be happy for me to mention the rules because I'm not the only one, I'm sure, who has been flaunting them without even realising it.
My RL brother and I both have accounts on SL, he a paid account, mine is a basic account. At that point my brother and I used to log into each others accounts occasionally, for many reasons, the main one being that I was not proficient in several areas of building in SL, so he used to help by setting things up in my name. We trust each other implicitly so it was never a security risk, as we are family.
on 27th Oct I had a technical issue regarding my classified ad, and even my brother couldn't work out the issue. But because I thought I can't send a ticket having only a basic account, I asked him to raise the ticket as we were both stumped, and this is what he said:
"my alt Indigoblue Dagostino set up a classified ad ages ago, but for some reason today it has disappeared in her profile and so now of course if someone does a search ie on weddings or bridal etc, ETERNITY BRIDES & SELDOM BLUE doesnt come up. The land is set to mature, the content of the ad hasnt changed in ages. Can you tell me what's gone wrong? Should she just set up another classified ad? Or is it a SL glitch and she should leave well alone and all will return?
The next day LL sent this back...
"Thank you for contacting Linden Lab Support. I have read through your concern and can only say that I can not provide any information about another account unless we can confirm the account you have mentioned belongs to you. From the information that we have, the information used to register these accounts does not match. I have had to place both of these accounts on hold pending identity confirmation. You should have received a letter in your email giving you instructions on how to confirm your account. If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to reopen this ticket. I apologize for any inconvenience caused."
From that point on we were both suspended from Second Life.
To cut a VERY long story short, there resulted a flurry of phone calls and emails on my behalf on a daily basis. I sent formal identification to them on day 1 but it took till day 5 to reactivate me. Their final ticket response to explain the suspension looked like this:
"I have reactivated your account after having confirmed your details. Please be aware that account sharing is anyway unacceptable and against the Terms of Service. I understand that in this particular case, this may have been an attempt to gain premium support for a base account by claiming this account belonged to another resident.
In this case, the account was held because the ticket was filed under another name, which claimed ownership over this account (this is a Terms of Service violation if found to be untrue). Holding the account was a safety measure for you as well as us. Third party use of accounts and account transfers are Terms of Service violations, if repeated, could result in account loss: Please note that account registrations are limited per unique person. Using another residents account to gain access to Second Life, associated website(s) or support channels is not acceptable. Residents may not transfer the use of their account to any third party without the prior written consent of Linden Lab. Thank you for your understanding while we resolved this matter."
So THAT was the reason for the suspension. The fact was that my brother asked on my behalf, and they looked at both our account details and saw that they did not match. So it was an immediate suspension. I actually DO understand that they have to be very careful when it comes to checking accounts, and I even understand why they might take it upon themselves to suspend our accounts. But what I did NOT understand was the fact that there was NO indication of timescale on the suspension, no timeline at all, I could've been offline for days, or weeks, or permanently. In their rules it says that they can terminate an account with no notice! People were telling me that it was taking 6 months to simply get replies to their tickets! I didn't know WHAT was going on. My days were fraught as a result of the suspension as you can imagine. I couldn't log in to pay bills, couldn't deal with my 2000 customers, couldn't launch my general releases, couldn't use my online account or even SLX. It was incredibly frustrating.
Now of course I've been re-activated. But now I'm nervous about logging in, scared about doing my launches in case I get suspended again and worried about making any money in case I'm locked out and can't access it anyway. It goes without saying that I won't ever been raising any tickets regarding to my or any other account again, too risky. I also won't be upgrading my account to a paid version. My faith has been absolutely shattered quite honestly, and I feel totally let down.. previous to this experience I could never see my love for Second Life waning, but now it definitely has a finite shelf life for me, simply because I don't trust it as MY Second Life at all. It will always be theirs.
SECOND LIFE TERMS OF SERVICE:
http://secondlife.com/corporate/tos.php
