Second Life Residents have been experiencing what seems like theft of their land. It happens in the window regarding  selling a plot of land. Cima Zeevi, a victim of land bot activities describes it like this, "I was transferring the  land from group onto my own name but instead of selling it to my name, I made the mistake of setting it to sell to  anyone. Immediately, a landbot called "Hana Campanese" showed up and captured the land by purchasing it. She was  willing to refund, but .. I had to pay L$ 10,000! The owner said it was to cover the tier, but I considered it to be  extortion. I didn't want to loose the land, so I just paid this owner to have my property back. Hana Campanese  bought the 8192m2 land for L$ 1. It is the landbot of Celene Ballinger." Cima adds, "Please look 2 3 or maybe 4  times when you put your land for sale." Some don't intend to set their land to sell to anyone for near nothing, but  with Second Life's interface lagging and server asset issues, users that get impatient may be doing things they  don't intend while it seems they are frozen. It is very important to be careful on the screen that offers your  valuable land for sale way under market value.

How should land owners protect themselves? Auto Oh, landbot operator says, "Rewrite the system. The problem isn't  the landbots its really the system. If you set the price, and set it to sell to anyone and then click ok, then  confirm the action you are taking and you click OK again,  You are either not reading or you are just randomly  clicking. If you own a lot of land and have invested 50 to 100 real dollars, you should at least read the warning  prompts that effect the sale of your land. As of Second Live's viewer version, 1.19.0(4), Linden Lab Added a warning  dialog to the Land Sale process to warn against selling land to Anyone, February 28th, 2008. One bot operator said,  "If LindenLab would create a transfer button that worked the same as "sell land" and this were the default setting  for selling land, it would drop 70% of all mistakes, but, nothing will ever cure stupid, but it would help. Bots  make mistakes, and it's a lot more devastating when you've automated it. Our operator sold all of our most prime  land at the bottom of the market twice. It hurts when you lose $5,000 USD worth of land."

SongbirdClone Writer says, "on Dec 24 & 25th, 2006, I  had just purchased a 1024 sqm lot next to the land we have at  Zecksnine 90, 195, 46  (Habitat Trust for Wildlife) when ALL our land 10752 sqm got pirated by a BOT belonging to  the group SUPREME FLOCK OF LAND NINJAS.  This was a terrible mistake!!!   All of our land was NOT for sale. I only  meant to sell 1024. Not all the 10,000." The land was intended to benefit her charity. Songbird started a group  "Anti Land Bot Coalition" dedicated to stopping the use and abuse of land bots.

In Real Life, Real Estate transactions are serious business, handled at settlement meetings. SL has weddings, maybe  it's time for SL to imitate RL in yet another way. Jim Sella for iReports, Thanks go to Montelli Vantelli for  research.