Linden Lab whacks German teens?
by Tateru Nino 
Jun 4th 2008 at 5:45PM
Filed under: News items, Second Life
According to Ziggy Moonflower (Michael Lange) from Metaversa, Linden Lab has killed nearly 70% of the Teen Second Life accounts belonging to German teens, for unspecified 'security issues'.
Some of those teens will doubtless be making new accounts to protest and resume participation, while others will probably not return to the virtual world. The teens with new accounts will obviously have lost their inventory, any creations and all their in-world cash.
Linden Lab does not discuss account sanctions as a matter of policy, so there is likely no way to find out what may have happened here.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
DD Ra said on 8:59PM 6-04-2008
Probably another case of fear of some legal problem...
In turn, another consequence could be that some of them switch to SL instead of SL teens.
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Jay said on 9:38PM 6-04-2008
Killed or murdered?
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Tateru Nino said on 12:00AM 6-05-2008
Well, 'terminated' would be another synonym.
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Katharine Berry said on 2:20AM 6-05-2008
As a side note, they're hardly the most polite teens. They capitalise everything and end it with numerous exclamation marks.
In any case, here's the actual message they received:
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Dear Teen Second Life Resident:
Your account has been temporarily suspended for a mandatory security upgrade. We apologize for this, and we will send an email when these upgrades have been implemented. In the meantime, if you have further questions about your account or accessing Teen Second Life, please Submit a Ticket on our support portal ([url]http://secondlife.com/support[/url]) under the Special Questions section and select "I can't log in to my Teen Second Life account". We will get back to you as soon as possible.
Best, Second Life Support
---
Note use of words like "temporary". I would not be hugely surprised if this was related to the glitch in the system which failed to verify accounts created in German for the TG for several weeks, although private educational projects tend to bypass that anyway.
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Katharine Berry said on 2:21AM 6-05-2008
(And I have no idea where the [url]...[/url] bit in there came from)
Tateru Nino said on 3:01AM 6-05-2008
A "mandatory security upgrade" -- I'd ask Linden Lab what that means, if I thought I was going to get an answer this quarter.
Ziggy said on 1:07PM 6-05-2008
Katherine,
according to the support, "temporarily" means, that their old accounts were deleted, but they have the chance to make new accounts.
I really wonder, what would happen if they treat a community in the MG in this way, and I hope for the future that they take teens more seriously than that.
Although the security issue was solved, they won't tell us, what was wrong with these accounts. I think I would feel better, if i knew that this problem was a really threatening situation for SL.
Michael/Ziggy
Educator from Metaversa
Loki said on 4:33AM 6-05-2008
the thought that Linden Lab can wipe out an entire community with no warning is somewhat terrifying. A lot have been arguing about this very subject. I would like to know why they terminated these residents of the teen grid. So that i can either be understanding or horrified.
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Patchouli Woollahra said on 12:12PM 6-05-2008
Would you settle for "horrifyingly understanding" or "understandably horrified" if that's not an option? :) / :(
Seriously though, if Katherine Berry's claim is true, a significant (not necessarily majority but... :( ) German teens are apparently the new Brazilian punk. or .my moron.
God help us all when they grow old enough to demand access to the MG and get it :(
Patchouli Woollahra said on 12:12PM 6-05-2008
Re: #6
Tat, it's almost the end of June. Why not chance it? Might get a surprise.
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