Scams in Second Life & Cyber Law

Money Laundering & Scam

Second Life claims to have more than five million residents, a daily cash flow of US$265,000, and an economic impact of about US$17 billion. As an indication of the power of this market, household names, such as Nike, IBM and Dell, have created a presence in Second Life.

 In addition, the World Bank has held a virtual conference and major universities have used virtual classrooms for online study programs. Most virtual world platforms charge a subscription fee, typically around US$15 per month.

Participants in Second Life use credit cards or an online payment broker such as PayPal or Neteller to buy virtual currency called Linden dollars. Players use their Linden dollars to buy and sell goods and services in the virtual world. These include skins (avatar images), virtual houses, airplanes, and virtual goods available in virtual online stores.

Thus,whenever there is ample amount of money involved in transaction between single or multiple parties,the chances for money laundering or scams to occur are very high in nature.The virtual world has contributed to many online fraud and scam which resulted in many case being reported in the European countries although less cases where reported in Asian countries.

Scammers prey on your uncertainty and greed when trying to defraud you, so do your research beforehand and save yourself a lot of trouble as you are not sure which site is genuine to purchase the Linden Dollars.Thus,we becareful when the offer is to good to be true.

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.

The increasing alert on money laundering and scams,Second Life virtual world moderators do provide us with 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.

Obviously there is some kind off effort from the moderators of Linden to help curb this money scam and money laundering.Thus,the conduct of reporting abuse has certainly got relativity with cyber law.

The user of Second Life blog must be educated enough to know their rights and take proper initiative to equip themselves with proper and genuine cyber law knowledge to avoid getting scammed

"We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before." A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. John Perry Barlow. Davos, Switzerland. February 8, 1996. 

posted by Thressna Vaani a/p Chandrasegaran