Here's now you can avoid the mistake I made recently that allowed someone to buy for only eight cents my Second Life™ land that I had planned to sell for $150. I wrote about it last week. I had no recourse other than the mercy of the person who bought my land. I spent two days believing I had lost my land forever. I wasn't even able to enter the property - it was surrounded by red ban lines that blocked anyone but the new owners from entering. In the end, the buyer sold me the land back for the eight cents she paid for it, but only after taunting me by threatening not to.
The mistake I made is very easy to make. It happens so fast that you lose your land immediately, before you even realize you've made a mistake. If it can happen to someone like me, a person who's been in Second Life for eight years and has sold a lot of land, it can happen to anyone.
The problem is landbots, scripted agents that patrol the Second Life mainland continually, watching for land being sold at a low price. When a property is marked for sale, if it's below a certain price, the landbot buys it instantly. If you've made a careless error, it will buy the land from you before you know what's happening.
The problem has been around for a long time. Reuters had an article four years about a woman who wanted to give her Second Life land to a friend so she marked it for sale but before the friend could complete the transaction, a landbot bought the $500 land for only a penny. She had no recourse. She lost the land.
There's was discussion about the issue on SLUniverse that covers many of the points of view on the issue. You can read it at www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/virtual-business/2137-landbot-gets-4096-1l-4.html.
If you are the victim of a landbot, there's a very useful resource at landbot.wordpress.com/directory. It's a listing of known landbots and their owners.
My next column will tell you how to prevent a landbot from taking your land.
Comments