Potential bots or scam accounts invading a sim

[Anubis Backbite]

Not sure what to do or if to report it or not. the last week or so a number of accounts all with similar names (notsure if i can put names or not but they all have names that are linked with the same word ending their names) have been appearing around the sim i live in and the surrounding ones. everyone has the same res date and are all positioned around peoples houses and things. is this something to worry about such as them scanning account details and such?

[Vicious Hollow]

It has been noticed by several, there are a rash of spy/stalker/tracking bots popping up lately. I myself have seen several of those, popping up around our home, while driving/flying/sailing in certain areas, and we even had one or two drop in at our secondary shop. Those tend to have a similar name with a number at the end of it, but also have some others with various names - ages ranging from 100 days to 500 (give or take). 

The ones you've seen, probably aren't the same ones, but more so used for some gaming experience like for "Tiny Empires" or something similar. I've even seen some that are being used by other shops as "models" for their product. In the past, I've known of some clubs using groups of bots to raise traffic as well. 

 

In most if not all cases, with the exception of one or two reports of odd interactions, they're harmless....annoying, but harmless. 

 

One thing you can do is check their profiles, which I'm sure there won't be much info in there, but check on the "web" tab and see if they've been reported as stalker/spy/tracking  bots.  After that, about the only thing one can do as a precautionary  action, is to block them, and ban them from your property. As mentioned though, in most cases seen, they're harmless and in the ones you've seen, most likely for a shop or gaming or something of such.   

[Anubis Backbite]

thanks for the advice. it just seemed sus that since ive been there theres been no one but residents around and then all of a sudden an invasion of all of these dots on the map.

[Maitimo]

On 11/23/2022 at 7:41 PM, Vicious Hollow said:

The ones you've seen, probably aren't the same ones, but more so used for some gaming experience like for "Tiny Empires" or something similar. I've even seen some that are being used by other shops as "models" for their product. In the past, I've known of some clubs using groups of bots to raise traffic as well. 

The Tiny Empires bots usually gather in circles of 8-12 bots together. I usually see those at the bottom of the sea somewhere, never seen them gathered around residential homes. And of course traffic bots wouldn't do that either.

[WereBeast Alpha]

I keep on having Avis enter my sim and leave within one second of entering all are over 13-year-old accounts. My orb lets me know when someone enters and exits. this happens on my RP sim. 

[DarioAkita]

I solved the bot problems in my sim installing the Voodoo Security 3.1Protection and it work very well: eject the bot when they land in the sim immediately

[Lucia Nightfire]

IBTL

🤖

[Ardy Lay]

On 11/26/2022 at 6:58 PM, Maitimo said:

The Tiny Empires bots usually gather in circles of 8-12 bots together.

I suspect the groups I found are harmless.  They were all named <Name1>As<Name2> where Name1 and Name2 could be anything but were usually common names but sometimes other words.  The ones I found are apparently all trying to stay out of people's parcels.  They were all on Linden Lab owned public land.  Are they maybe playing a HUD game?  Tiny Empires?  Whatever it is, several groups appear at about the same time and vanish at about the same time.

[Maitimo]

Yep I am 99.9% sure these bots are playing Tiny Empires. For some reason (probably related to the mechanics of the game) these circles almost always contain exactly 11 avatars. At least they are being thoughtful and staying out of the way of privately-owned parcels, although they do occasionally cause issues of access to sailable regions.

[Ardy Lay]

11 hours ago, Maitimo said:

Yep I am 99.9% sure these bots are playing Tiny Empires. For some reason (probably related to the mechanics of the game) these circles almost always contain exactly 11 avatars. At least they are being thoughtful and staying out of the way of privately-owned parcels, although they do occasionally cause issues of access to sailable regions.

Now I am curious how the circles are formed.  Manually placing the avatars into such a formation would be tedious.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

5 hours ago, Ardy Lay said:

Now I am curious how the circles are formed.  Manually placing the avatars into such a formation would be tedious.

If a landing point is not enabled, you can choose exactly where you want to teleport/log in.

Tiny Empires (TE) is a HUD-based game where you have to be logged in to gain income. People use alts to gain it faster.

There's a bunch of blog posts and products on the Marketplace related to helping people manage their TE alts. One of the common pieces of advice is to use script run multiple instances of Radegast with all of your alts at once, and you can choose the location/position. There's probably a script out there that logs every alt in as a circle, it wouldn't be difficult to make.

 

As for OP, they made this thread around the time when the Bonnies were commonly sighted, so that's probably what they saw instead of TE alts.

Edited January 29, 2023 by Wulfie Reanimator