Possible stalker and harrassing in real life

[Kurenai Jun]

I have received a troubling IM from a dear friend of mine in Second Life, where she describes the following. Someone is harassing her to potentially stalk her in real life and god knows what he would do else. I have made a screenshot in-world of my conversation with my friend, where she also copied her conversation with the harasser, by using the Report Abuse tool and then reported him under disclosure>real life information. It has occurred before, but at the time I did not think heavily about the situation. I now worry about her well-being, what are the necessary steps to execute to have this situation dealt with?

Kurenai Jun.

p.s. In essence of terms of service, i am unsure if i should include screenshots of my conversation with my friend, the victim in this post, so I have not included them.

[Lindal Kidd]

Let's steer back on track...

Kurenai, your concern for your friend is understandable!

There are three possibilities here:

1.  Your friend is making the whole thing up in hopes that it will generate sympathy.  I know, you don't want that to be true, and maybe it's not.  But it has most certainly happened before this.
2. Your friend's stalker has no intention of stalking her in Real Life, and may not even be able to.  He's just trying to scare her.  This too has happened many, many times on the internet.
3.  Your friend's stalker presents a real danger to her in Real Life.

Aside from providing a sympathetic ear for your friend, you yourself can do nothing about any of the above scenarios.  What you CAN do is to tell your friend about the tools available in SL to deal with griefers/stalkers/troublemakers.  These are:

• The Mute/Block function
• Banning the annoying person from any land you own or rent
• Totally ignoring the person.  Do not respond to IMs, inventory offers, etc.
• Submit an Abuse Report for each specific incident.  Reference earlier reports submitted against this person or their alts to establish a pattern.
• In extreme cases, your friend may want to create an alt.  If so, the new account should not join her main account's groups, add any of her current friends (except maybe you) and stay away from places her main account visited regularly.

Besides the tools for dealing with in-world harrassment, your friend should contact the FBI (or if she is not in the USA, whatever law enforcement agency deals with cross-border stalking in her country.)  She can provide chat and IM logs to the authorities, and they have the ability to get a warrant and request additional information on the stalker from Linden Lab.

Note that your friend is the one who must take these actions.  You can't do it for her.  Make sure she knows what to do, and then provide whatever moral support you can.

Edited May 3, 2018 by Lindal Kidd

[Nalytha]

If you are close enough friends with her, get her phone number so that you can check in on her if she doesn't log in for a while. If she doesn't want to give her real phone number, there are apps on phones now that will giver you a 'burner' phone number to use. 

What makes you think this harasser knows where she lives though? Lots of people can threaten, but is this friend of yours giving out personal details as to her location for this person to know? 

I doubt you can do much more with LL than report. Maybe your friend should use an alt for a few weeks and let this thing blow over with the harasser. They will probably get bored and move on if there is no one there to interact with. (That means you can't interact with them either)

[Kurenai Jun]

In the conversations we had before, she has mentioned that the person we speak of has confessed that he has stalked someone before. I am thinking to do that, or at least keep contact via mail or discord.

The harasser has mentioned before that he has stalked someone, but he also happens to know, well according to my friend, the personal information of my friend, so it won't be a problem to find out her real-life location. 

Yes, I also consider contacting the local police at her location to at least report it to them so they have at least something on paper.

[Ethan Paslong]

there is more wrong here than what your "friend" tells..

she isn't allowed to give you the transcriptions, and if that has info about the accused stalker, she is in the same violation as he is.

Hear say is never a good base to ask advice. If she is in trouble she has to take action herself.

For LL, Police or any other official you are not part of this unless you'r a legal rl partner of her.

If you reported him, theres a huge chance your reports is simply trashed. Many of these things are seen as resident/resident issue and LL will not take action. There has to be a serious breach of TOS first. And if she shared her contact info/rl information, it's out of control of LL, she has to contact RL officials.

[Nalytha]

15 minutes ago, Ethan Paslong said:

there is more wrong here than what your "friend" tells..

she isn't allowed to give you the transcriptions, and if that has info about the accused stalker, she is in the same violation as he is.

Regardless of the 'rules,' it's just a fact that some people take screenshots and yes, share them. You can admonish all you want, but it won't change the facts. If this woman ended up hurt or dead because of this person, I doubt LL is going to go -- "She's in trouble for sharing screenshots." At that point, no one is going to care. 

Hear say is never a good base to ask advice. If she is in trouble she has to take action herself.

I agree she should take action. I want to know how he got her information. Is there a weakness in the SL program that exposes personal information or is this a case where the girl was not cautious enough with what she shares with strangers. 

For LL, Police or any other official you are not part of this unless you'r a legal rl partner of her.

Anyone can report suspicious activity to the police. Anyone. 

If you reported him, theres a huge chance your reports is simply trashed. Many of these things are seen as resident/resident issue and LL will not take action. There has to be a serious breach of TOS first. And if she shared her contact info/rl information, it's out of control of LL, she has to contact RL officials.

Agreed. OP's ticket will probably end in no tangible result with LL. Also, everyone needs to take responsibility for their own safety by being prudent with what they share online. 

 

[Ethan Paslong]

1 minute ago, Nalytha said:

it won't change the facts.

you and i know very well, 99% of the "facts" in these cases are drama. Not saying this is, but there's a lot more than there's told here.

If something is really wrong, a forum isn't likely the best place to start discussing this. Every well thinking adult could think about that.

[Nalytha]

1 minute ago, Ethan Paslong said:

you and i know very well, 99% of the "facts" in these cases are drama. Not saying this is, but there's a lot more than there's told here.

If something is really wrong, a forum isn't likely the best place to start discussing this. Every well thinking adult could think about that.

I can agree in most cases it’s lies and drama. But it can be helpful for the 1% of real cases to respond constructively. Also, threads like these, while started in deception might be read later by real victims searching old threads for support for their very real cases.

Also, threads like this can serve as a reminder for everyone to take personal safety seriously and mind what you share with people. 

[Ethan Paslong]

1 minute ago, Nalytha said:

I can agree in most cases it’s lies and drama. But it can be helpful for the 1% of real cases to respond constructively. Also, threads like these, while started in deception might be read later by real victims searching old threads for support for their very real cases.

Also, threads like this can serve as a reminder for everyone to take personal safety seriously and mind what you share with people. 

can't disagree in this