Second Life suffers security breach
All 650,000 users are being required to request a new password

Updated: 30 minutes ago


Linden Lab, the San Francisco-based company behind the Second Life site, said in a letter to its 650,000 users this weekend that its customer database, including names, addresses, passwords and some credit card data, had been compromised.

yikes! that's bad.

[Wittesea]

I thought I read somewhere that JL worked at Linden Labs, or works for Linden Labs, or something like that....

[Curious]

you might be right wittesea

http://zero.hastypastry.net/pathfinder/

[wannabe]

I don't know almost anything about this Second Life, but it seems really strange to me.

Does anyone else think it's just plain weird? Why would adults spend MONEY to buy fake land, fake clothes, fake things for a fake person on Second Life? I understand if you were a kid "play acting" (although this would probably be kind of an expensive past-time), but for adults?

I don't understand the draw of people actually wanting to spend money on fake things. Maybe the land transactions ect might be analogous to playing the stock market or something, betting that the value for a fake piece of land would go up (like monopoly meybbe?), but in Second Life, what are market forces beyond interest in the Second Life fake world itself? Seems like a risky investment based on just interest in a fake world that you have no control over how its run, ect.

Is it just me or do others just find it really weird that this is an actual huge virtual community with a lot of real-life money being used to fund fake stuff on it? Can anyone else me understand the "pull" of a fake community like this? I was never one to play with dolls... maybe that's it.

[Curious]

especially when you can get "toys" for free.

[KTM5665]

I only beheaded my brothers GI Joes for fun...real life fun. And...that's becasue he tried flushing my barbie collection down the sewer one day. Nice.Prolly explains a whole lot!

[Username]

Second Life started as a way for people with social disorders, such as Aspergers, a form of Autism, to interact with the outside world. These people learn valuable life skills by role playing and fine tuning their skills in an attempt to integrate into "real" society. It has evolved just as everything else in this world evolves in a nano-second. There are many people that live their lives behind closed doors because they just don't fit in for what ever reason. This has been a God send for them. Many others just like to play the game, it's no different than Sims or any other reality based interactive game.

John Lester is actually closer to a genius than many people recognize.

Linda

[Thelma]

you really are right on target there

[wannabe]

I understand that Second Life may be therapeutic for people with social disorders. Are they being charged for this "therapy" and are the Second Life producers profiting off of the need of those with social disorders for this type of interaction? Were the forums used as a vehicle for finding paying individuals with social disorders? Or as a means to market this to others, by showing its success with those with social disorders?

Username, I'm not accusing, I'm just asking because I honestly know next to nothing about this and I really don't understand people, particularly healthy adults, buying and selling things like they would in real life, but in fantasy-land where you may not have any after market to sell off what you paid real money for because it's not real and people might get bored with this "game". I get that our society runs on similar quirks, like using money as a symbol of value to buy things. This just seems even stranger since you don't even get anything tangible for your real money. I want to understand though.

I really don't understand paying good money to buy fake things in a fake place. Maybe that's because I'm not a genius .