Jason? Stephen? Whomever 'they' are..they are harassing and a nuisance!

[Venus Petrov]

There is someone or an organization of avatars going from venue to venue in SL and hitting patrons up with a request very similar to this: 

"Hey nice avatar...I'm new to this game and saved 238 of those linden things from a contest and camping...I'm trying to get this skin/shape combo for 700...I feel bad for asking but can you please lend me 462 so I can get it?...if not thats fine too...just seems nobody wants to help me out."

Jason and now Stephen (numbers after their names) have been doing this for weeks.  A club can eject and ban one and another one will show up shortly after.  Patrons are harassed.  What can be done to stop this kind of serial activity?

Discuss.

[Keli Kyrie]

---

Venus Petrov wrote:

There is someone or an organization of avatars going from venue to venue in SL and hitting patrons up with a request very similar to this: 

"Hey nice avatar...I'm new to this game and saved 238 of those linden things from a contest and camping...I'm trying to get this skin/shape combo for 700...I feel bad for asking but can you please lend me 462 so I can get it?...if not thats fine too...just seems nobody wants to help me out."

Jason and now Stephen (numbers after their names) have been doing this for weeks.  A club can eject and ban one and another one will show up shortly after.  Patrons are harassed.  What can be done to stop this kind of serial activity?

Discuss.

---

What I believe is happening is this. The person finds a big group they can join to get a list of names, the place you work is prefect it has really big list of names. They open the group profile and start going down the list sending out their spam. To stop them from causing a problem for your group eject them from the group then they can not have access to the list anymore.

[Jenni Darkwatch]

I don't think there's really anything that can be done. If we had better ban tools, maybe. As in "Ban this user+IP+Machine ID". Wouldn't even have to have the actual info, just a checkbox in the ban/eject menu.

[Dilbert Dilweg]

Venus this has always been a problem for heavily trafficked regions. When I owned sweethearts we had this problem almost every day. . What they are doing is logging into the regions and sending private message to everyone in the region. It is almost instant. The bot will gather the list of names on the region and send the preconfigured request to each resident in IM. They log out of the region just as fast as they log in and send the messages

Its all in numbers for the bots. They will hit as many residents as they can. The best recursive action is to educate your guests as to the scam and inform them to block these residents for good. It will not stop them from doing it. But it may slow down their ability to profit from it. Or get everyone on the region to file an abuse report(which is not always practical for your guests and causes more disturbance than the actual spam). Because it is mass mail being sent on the region. repetative transmission

 

If they can message 70,000 active residents in a day and get at least 1% of their request. They made a good pay day LOL

 

After we started educating the people about the scam they slowed down coming to our region. I don't know if it worked or not. But they are annoying to say the least

 

All the big clubs should send out monthly or weekly notecards talking about the top 5 or 10 scams in SL and how to protect your self from being scammed .  Everyone gets educated and they don't fall into it by dropping them 5 lindens... The bots lose their ability to profit and you win

 

The reason they keep coming back is because they are making money hitting the region.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Unfortunately other than ejecting and banning the avatar begging, there isn't much you can do.  The club should have a no begging rule and  encourage club patrons to report beggers to staff immediately so they can be ejected.   If people cooperate with that eventually they may get tired of and give up. 

I know club owners don't want people bothering their patrons like this, but when it happens to me, I don't blame it on the club or hold them responsible.  The way I look at it, if someone falls for this it is their own fault.   Begging is always a scam in my book, after all SL is not a necessity of RL.  If they can afford a computer and internet, they can spend their own money and if they don't want to ,its not my problem, its their choice.  If they persist and get nasty when I tell them this, then mute works great.

[JoJo Aurelia]

Thank you Jason for so much info. I didn't realize these were bots. But it makes sense b/c they're really fast. I was at a club the other night and everyone got hit with that request. I thought it was just a person, never thinking it was a bot!

[Ren Toxx]

This one Venus talks about isn't necessarily a bot. The other day I met him at the landing point of one of those high traffic venues and, on receiving his routine IM, I began mocking him in public chat; he was there alright, because he got clearly upset at my words and tried pushing me around, only stopping when he saw I was in phantom mode.

[Dilbert Dilweg]

I can use  a bot to log into several regions and talk directly to anyone who speaks to me in public or private

Connect to multiple SIMs: When you login to SL this option allows Program to connect to the SIMs surrounding the SIM you are logging into. It is useful for such things as SIM crossings. You should bare in mind that this option could connect to over 100 SIMs upon login. It will have an impact on the amount of memory and bandwidth used by this viewer.

 Imagine how much mainland you could cover and then start working the populated private regions one by one or simply program the open source viewer to auto connect to a list of landmarks

And Bots use regular accounts and regualr accounts to travel.

 

There are text viewers that can do this and have plugins to send mass messages to public and or groups = Bot activity

 

I am sure that there may be some that do it conventionally which is time consuming lol

 

PS I am not Jason and people do control bots

 

I have run clubs for years and my wife and I discovered the mass messages were instant when she was logged in on the same region. My alt was also there and my main account. we all get the message about the same time. My wife was 1,000 meters up and no where to be seen. . Every time the beggars hit we got the same message pretty much at the same time and I would look at my bot logs and see this resident entered long enough to gather names. send message and leave. They probably have a list of landmarks of the top places to go .. Begging is big business or can be lol. Seems a lot like bot activity to me

 

I also stumbled on another program recently that will log into a region and send mass messages, pregonficured and no big bells and whistles. just a simple spammer bot

 

These are my personal discoveries from long term club ownership and security

[Lynda Baran]

Yes, Yes  A new SUPER BAN feature.   And we need to get the government involved and have some new laws.    God forbid that anyone would do something on their own, like just mute the a-holes.   We must be protected for our own good.

[Karyn Kennedy]

It seems Neverending...why can't they (ANYONE at the "LAB") do anything to STOP this annoyance!! I have been hit up by this Avatar(s) so many times it is totally out of control!! LINDENS where are you on this issue??!?!?!?!?!?!?!

[Jenni Darkwatch]

That kind of issue shouldn't need any handling by Lindens. But... they're for whatever reason not giving residents the means to deal with crap like that ourselves.

[LadyRed Woodland]

[10:06] Steven174: hey nice avatar...im new to this game and saved 238 of those linden things from a contest and camping...im trying to get this skin/shape combo for 700...i feel bad for asking but can you please lend me 462 so i can get it?...if not thats fine too...just seems nobody wants to help me out

 

 

posted this to me today and everyone at the ambrosia danceclub.... i wish someone would just ban this guy from sl

[Lynn Wylder]

[10:06] Steven174: hey nice avatar...im new to this game and saved 238 of those linden things from a contest and camping...im trying to get this skin/shape combo for 700...i feel bad for asking but can you lend me 462 so i can get it?...if not thats fine too...just seems nobody wants to help me out

 

THIS IS A NUISANCE!! PLEASE ADDRESS THIS ISSUE!

[Amino Parx]

yeah this bot is really annoying, i have reported it many times. LL PLEASE MAKE IT GO AWAY! 

 

KTHXBAI!

[geemix Newall]

The only folks who can really do much to stop this would be the Lindens as I am sure they have access to IP address' etc.

 

However, I am sure this person is clever enough to use a proxy, should their IP be banned, it's easy enough to fake another.

 

All we can do as a team is to just keep ejecting and banning for now and hopefully the Lindens can maybe catch this person thru machine id or similar means and make it stop once and for all.

 

As for club owners sending out notices to VIP's telling them to ignore this on a daily basis, I don't agree! It's basically gonna stop patrons coming to the club if they see a notice saying "oh btw we are invaded by spam bots, ignore them thx". To me, that will deter VIP's from wanting to visit a club/area.

 

I am sure most folks (except noobs) are aware of the scam and know how to simply close their IM and ignore it....for now.

 

 

 

 

[Venus Petrov]

---

LadyRed Woodland wrote:

[10:06] Steven174: hey nice avatar...im new to this game and saved 238 of those linden things from a contest and camping...im trying to get this skin/shape combo for 700...i feel bad for asking but can you please lend me 462 so i can get it?...if not thats fine too...just seems nobody wants to help me out

 

 

posted this to me today and everyone at the ambrosia danceclub.... i wish someone would just ban this guy from sl

---

 

LL would have to ban the operator and any associates who engage in this activity.  They have banned people before so banning this bozo should not be difficult.

[Nakilla]

Yeah this is becoming harassment it happens in a place muiltible times a day.  Its very annoying. Put way to much work to have to deal with being spamed by same person over and over again for credits i worked hard for to eather buy or earn on the Sim.

They need to start Watching this guy and not just ban the name but ban the ip address. he has abused the game and his privlage should be taked from him. There are many ways to see whats going on and if he is taking that money to a main account. It can be done Second life just has to get on the ball to get this done.

[Turainia]

Jason-Markey-Steven174: hey nice avatar...im new to this game and saved 238 of those linden things from a contest and camping...im trying to get this skin/shape combo for 700...i feel bad for asking but can you lend me 462 so i can get it?...if not thats fine too...just seems nobody wants to help me out

 I can not tell you how many times  I have reported this activity, to deaf ears it seems.  This is harassment in the worst kind.  Something needs to be done, it chases away good people from the clubs, because the bot or whatever it is continues to spam.  

I agree, it gets the group list, I have been spammed at my own home, no where near any of the clubs.  THIS  has to be dealt with by Linden Labs.  It makes people want to avoid certian clubs because of the harrasment.

[Kaelyn Melody]

I know of at least two clubs getting hit even harder by this bozo because of their public actions against him, or it. It's important to tell people what to do when stuff like this happens but it's just as important to remember that making a big deal especially publicly will likely make it worse. That's exactly what some of them want.

I know one particular club that was griefed for a long time by a few different people because of some of their actions. Things like using 3-5 alts per every staff member to boost traffic, allowing staff to disrespect club goers and break any and all rules they set for clubgoers. Making way too many public service announcements about stupid things. They've recently been getting hit by this same spammer dude and my guess is that for them it's no real surprise. They get hit with this kind of stuff all the time. I'm not validating what these people do at all. I don't support griefers. It's all crap and LL needs to do a heck of a lot more to put a stop to it. But they're not making the environment any better for their patrons either and I have a hard time feeling bad for the venue owners when they make a bed and then get stuck in it. They're basically making a perfect breeding ground for griefers. There's very little venue owners can do to stop this sort of thing. But there's a lot more they can, and do currently do, but shouldn't, as well.

[Splash Kidd]

Ultimately Linden Labs "Lab" has the most effective tools to deal with the current round of harassment issues that has been taking place at various clubs on the grid. The IP addresses of those people who use their various avatar accounts to grief is logged and recorded by the Lab, however someone could use a masking approach if they are clever enough, so that the IP account of record is not related to the person behind the griefing. I would venture to say that the Lab, given the complexity of Second Life and varous security needs and concerns it has to deal with on a daily bases, does have a number of security tools and methods in place that they could, if need be, use to ultimately figure out who or whom is controlling the Jason & Stephen avatar griefer bots.

The first line of defense for well mannered residents to deal with griefer avatars is to just totally ignore stupid or rude IM's they might get. The second line of defense is to use your handy dandy "mute" button when trouble continous and just ignoring doesn't solve the problem. And finally everyone should make sure to file an Abuse Report "AP" to the Lab about the abuse that took place that is not in compliance with the TOS. If the Lab gets enough legitimate AP filed about the "Jason? Stephen" issues taking place on the grid they will utlimately have to deal with the problem in a more forth right manner. It's in the Labs and the community of second lifes interest, to have the grid to be an enjoyable place to hang out on thats not subject to endless forms of griefing.

[Laetizia Coronet]

Please open a JIRA for this, requesting that the possibility to send simultaneous IMs to everyone in a region be disabled. Get your patrons to vote for this. It usually works better than angry shouting about how LL doesn't do anything.

[Vick Forcella]

I know it's only partly related.

With group IM's and the group is "open" ejecting doesn't do much, they just enter the group again. The trick is to create a role "morons" without any powers and place them into that.

[ninjamonkee]

Please help fix this.  It's obnoxious.

[Rowan Sabra]

Steven174: hey nice avatar...im new to this game and saved 238 of those linden things from a contest and camping...im trying to get this skin/shape combo for 700...i feel bad for asking but can you lend me 462 so i can get it?...if not thats fine too...just seems nobody wants to help me out

 

 

this is just one of many that tihs person has spammed and harrassed me with. please take care of this jerk. makes the game unpleasant for anyone who gets constantly assaulted with his bot begging.

[Menolly Riederer]

They dont ban IP addresses... they change every time a router is reset.  They ban MAC addresses (google it). It would be nice to think LL would ban him/her/it but I doubt it.

There is NO point reporting the abuse of these idiots.  They are bots.  You are far better off muting them and advising others to do the same. Like with all bullies, if they don't met their end game they eventually give up. They send bots to these places BECAUSE they are making money.  BECAUSE they are getting attention.  I like the idea of clubs sending monthly newsletter/notice about the latest scams but be careful about how often you tell people as they will, as suggested, go, "Wow this venue gets hit all the time, I'm going somewhere else". 

As much as people would like LL to fix this, they probably won't.  Why?  Because they would get thousands and thousands of abuse reports a day and to be honest, this probably wont even be opened though having mass reports will flag it higher.   (There are far more pressing issues they need to contend with, like creating new content noone has asked for perhaps.)

Perhaps the clubs should look at closing their open enrolment groups for a couple of weeks.  Make them invite only by staff members.  Apart from that I think the only option is to mute, ban and wait it out.