strange avatars always hovering over my land

[Almadi Masala]

For sometime now there has been a group of avatars hovering at about 1000 m above my land. They come and go, but there are usually about 6 of them there at any one time. They are usually in pairs, facing each other, hovering motionlessly. I have tried chatting and IMing them but they do not respond. Their profiles are empty and their ages range from a couple of months to over two years. Over the last several weeks they have increased the traffic count on that parcel from less than 10 to almost 7000.

Any ideas why they would be doing this? Would it be reasonable for me to eject them from my airspace? They are not causing any trouble that I can detect, but it makes me nervous to see them always there.

 

[Darren Scorpio]

Yes it is very reasonable to eject and ban them. They are just weirdos.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

They are almost certainly 'bots - computer-controlled avatars that just need to be 'somewhere' for whatever they're up to.  It's possible that their controller owned/rented your land before and never changed the location they were programmed to go to.

It would be entirely reasonable for you to eject and ban them.  Not necessarily very friendly, but it's your land so you don't need an excuse :-)  Sims are limited in their avatar capacity so it's plausible that they are stopping genuine visitors from coming, although that's probably not likely or you'd be aware of it.

[LoveAngeL Lyre]

I would have ejected and banned them by the first day there.

[Canoro Philipp]

IM them and tell them that they have 5 minutes to come up with a good reason to be there or else they will be banned.. and wait.. if they dont respond you can ban them

they cant say that you didnt warn them and you didnt give them a chance to defend themselves

[RedMokum Bravin]

This is probably just a group of Tiny Empires players. I've seen such groups often, but mostly hovering over a parcel that one group member owned. Quite often also there will be one main avatar with a cloud of alts who have been logged in with the help of a text only client. The trick is finding the main avatar, if you want to talk to him at all, it's usually the one with profile details whereas the others have none.

 

[Charolotte Caxton]

That sounds creepy. Why facing each other in pairs?

[Griffin Ceawlin]

All my TE alts have profile details, and wardrobes to match.

[Peewee Musytari]

They sound like traffic bots to me, open a shop lol

[Almadi Masala]

Thanks for all of your responses.

I decided to put a security orb in the middle of the area they've been using -- not set to eject but just to monitor their activity. While I was setting it up, all 8 of the ones who were there started to disappear one by one. A little while later, 2 of them reappeared over a neighboring parcel that I also own. They would not communicate with me, so I ejected them both. One of them tried several times to return, but I kept ejecting him. Then he showed up again at ground level. I IMed him asking for an explanation, but he flew away without responding. I haven't seen them since.

My security system will continue monitoring, so I will know if any of them return to the same area where they were. Hopefully they will have decided to move on to someplace else to do whatever it is they are up to.

[Pussycat Catnap]

EDIT: oops, I'm late and you've posted that you've done more or less what I suggested.

 

This used to happen to me a lot when I lived in Fietzo.

In the adjacent sim is a shop that rents traffic bots (many times AR'd) to boost your traffic, as well as offers services to game your results in SL search (if I recall properly - but this part might not have been them).

They would park the excess avatars on my sim often in the early days of my time there - until I started commenting about them and posting pics. Either that or something else got to eventually dissapear.

 

My suggestion would be to buy a security orb (Hippo makes a good one) and set it up at the height they've been showing up. Then make sure your land / land group doesn't have anyone but you and your alts in it and that other people can't set that land as home.

Set the Orb to a 1 second warning, but limited to inside your land, and to send people home. Read its logs (I don't know if Hippo logs or not) - and add the bots to the ban list once they've each been booted - which should help keep them out if they have the lot set as home due to being associated with a previous owner or something.