Multiple alt accounts with the same name showing everywhere

[Love Zhaoying]

Has anyone tried offering L$ to the bots, to go away and not come back?

[Scylla Rhiadra]

9 hours ago, Skyler Pancake said:

I've personally reported at least a dozen of accounts for impersonation, including the one that visited Coffee. We've also been kicking out any fakes from the official group as we spot them. If it's not in the ACTUAL group(someone made an impersonation group as well. -.- ) or listed on the website, it's not one of ours and we can't do anything besides report it. And reporting around a dozen only resulted in about three being deleted. Possible others were banned and not fully removed though.

 

If one of the BB accounts is popping into your house and you POLITELY message us about it, we might be willing to come look and help. Ranting and going off like a Karen will likely result in snark.

In addition to what's been said above about your apparent attitude to home invasions from your bots, I want also to point out that a very great many people -- probably a largish majority of residents in-world -- don't know anything about your operation, or that of others. They don't read the forums, and they aren't on Twitter: they haven't read your FAQ, and likely would have a difficult time finding it if they even knew you had one. And when they did, it wouldn't tell them everything they might want to know anyway.

So, they react with alarm, or annoyance, born at least to some degree of ignorance. They may well have no idea what your bots are up to, and you've done very little to educate them. So that alarm and annoyance are hardly surprising. You're operating in public, and you are scraping data from people without their consent: a modicum of understanding might be called for.

You've kind of relied upon people's ignorance -- the absurd "opt out" option for an operation that the vast majority of people didn't even know was scraping and displaying their data is a case in point. But that cuts both ways (those who live by the sword, etc.), and one result has been a bit of a panic and a lot of disgruntlement. In the circumstances, it's not at all unreasonable to expect you to behave with a bit more consideration to those whose data you are filching.

[Maitimo]

10 hours ago, Skyler Pancake said:

If one of the BB accounts is popping into your house and you POLITELY message us about it, we might be willing to come look and help. Ranting and going off like a Karen will likely result in snark.

That is one of the most disgustingly obnoxious and unprofessional things I have ever heard from a supposed "business".  

First, it's your own business practises that are causing people to "go off like a Karen" in the first place.  So its YOU who is responsible for that behaviour, not them. If you didn't do that, they would not be complaining.

Second, it shouldn't matter whether people complaining are being polite or not. Politeness is subjective anyway. Us Brits swear and curse all the time, it doesn't mean we're being impolite. It's just filler words. Regardless of the attitude of the complainant, you should still be offering good customer service, every time.

Third, only a tiny percentage of SL users even know you exist. The rest have no way of finding out because they don't read the forums.  Put yourself in the shoes of a person who has just come out of an abusive relationship, and whose ex-partner has become threatening and even more abusive. So they leave their parcel and rent another in secret. But what's this? Some alt accounts with disturbingly similar names are cropping up in their region every day. Has the abuser found them? Is he stalking them? They move again, and again these strange alts show up every day. How did he even do that, they didn't tell anybody. He must have hacked their computer!   So now they are even more terrified. But they have no way of knowing. 

Your website says in the FAQ:  "Q. Are you stalking me?"  "A. No. Who are you again?"  This is blatantly false. You're stalking everyone, and you DO know who we are because you've already got our data. Your bots are causing some people unbearable anxiety, they might even be causing someone to harm themselves.

What you should be doing is sending a notecard, to every land-owner and every tenant on every region that your bots visit, to explain yourselves. You also need to include a full list of your bots by name, the opt-out information, along with the website url and the RL name and contact details of the data controller, as required by law.

 

[Qie Niangao]

11 hours ago, Skyler Pancake said:

If one of the BB accounts is popping into your house and you POLITELY message us about it, we might be willing to come look and help. Ranting and going off like a Karen will likely result in snark.

Sounds like a real "labor of love" going on here, right?

Why does this "bunch of friends goofing around" find this project appealing? For a while I could kind of imagine the satisfaction of seeing data collected and displayed, maybe discover emerging patterns, etc. And then this exhibition of pique. Why would someone post this, and how does that motivation fit with running a swarm of spybots?

Gives a whole new appreciation for the art of Public Relations.

[xDancingStarx]

2 hours ago, Maitimo said:

Some alt accounts with disturbingly similar names are cropping up in their region every day.

Right, this was probably the mistake that was made here, to be transparent about it. Now don't take me wrong, I was speaking out against this practice here in these forums very early on, and for me opt-out also didn't go far enough. I'm provenly unrelated to them. Yet, they've gotten so much hate by now, and now they're even blamed for naming their accounts in a certain way since there may be some people who may think they're a former abuser?? Sorry man but this is without base, their names don't violate TOS. At some point of time this whole thing has gotten blown way out of proportion. Fear of bots is propagated, yet there's not much they can do what scripts can't do. Those who scream the loudest, I'm not seeing them running around places to scan for visitor trackers and create threads in the forums because they don't know what's happening with that data, etc. Why not? Or is this just the next step?

Edited April 14, 2023 by xDancingStarx

[belindacarson]

2 hours ago, Maitimo said:

That is one of the most disgustingly obnoxious and unprofessional things I have ever heard from a supposed "business".  

First, it's your own business practises that are causing people to "go off like a Karen" in the first place.  So its YOU who is responsible for that behaviour, not them. If you didn't do that, they would not be complaining.

Second, it shouldn't matter whether people complaining are being polite or not. Politeness is subjective anyway. Us Brits swear and curse all the time, it doesn't mean we're being impolite. It's just filler words. Regardless of the attitude of the complainant, you should still be offering good customer service, every time.

Third, only a tiny percentage of SL users even know you exist. The rest have no way of finding out because they don't read the forums.  Put yourself in the shoes of a person who has just come out of an abusive relationship, and whose ex-partner has become threatening and even more abusive. So they leave their parcel and rent another in secret. But what's this? Some alt accounts with disturbingly similar names are cropping up in their region every day. Has the abuser found them? Is he stalking them? They move again, and again these strange alts show up every day. How did he even do that, they didn't tell anybody. He must have hacked their computer!   So now they are even more terrified. But they have no way of knowing. 

Your website says in the FAQ:  "Q. Are you stalking me?"  "A. No. Who are you again?"  This is blatantly false. You're stalking everyone, and you DO know who we are because you've already got our data. Your bots are causing some people unbearable anxiety, they might even be causing someone to harm themselves.

What you should be doing is sending a notecard, to every land-owner and every tenant on every region that your bots visit, to explain yourselves. You also need to include a full list of your bots by name, the opt-out information, along with the website url and the RL name and contact details of the data controller, as required by law.

 

Correction: publically available data that's already possible to get via lsl script.

 

Worried about avatars, block them, report them.

 

Let's all not forget that at least the bonnie bots came out said what they were doing and even made a website about it.  Not that many other bot operators did that

 

Us Brits, keep a stuff upper lip.

 

And if seriously you're "triggered" by these bots should you even be on sl at all?

Edited April 14, 2023 by belindacarson

[Katherine Heartsong]

Why isn't this operation opt in?

Oh wait, could it be the same reason Meta doesn't like Apple's ad policy ...

Hardly anyone would say yes, and it would be a ton of extra work for the bot maker. Oh, and it would also require a modicum of ethics* and decency on their part.

I get it now.

And they wonder why people are upset.

* Knowing the difference between what you have a right to do, versus what you should do.

[Rick Nightingale]

14 minutes ago, belindacarson said:

Us Brits, keep a stuff upper lip.

Being a Brit... there's a difference between keeping a stiff upper lip and putting up with things we shouldn't because 'it's not British to complain'. Far too much is allowed to go on here that is outrageous and should be shouted out about from every corner, because of that very confusion that's been programmed into (some of) us.

[Alwin Alcott]

13 hours ago, Skyler Pancake said:

and you POLITELY message us about it,

oh yes, i'd respond very politely  but those words would show up as  ************ here

[Rick Nightingale]

3 hours ago, Maitimo said:

That is one of the most disgustingly obnoxious and unprofessional things I have ever heard from a supposed "business".  

Thank you for putting it how I actually felt when I read Skylar Pancake's statement; my reply was rather restrained. I've hardly commented on the issue really, but that statement... well, it says all I need to know about their ethics.

[Love Zhaoying]

I think calling Coffee a "Karen" is very telling. A "Karen" is someone who complains about things to the manager / police / HOA that are invalid, benign, and which shouldn't bother anyone. "Karen's" are generally portrayed as clueless, racist, etc. Coffee is none of those, and her complaints are valid. 

Using the "she's a Karen" defense is a tactic to make the offended party look bad, even when they are completely in the right.

Edited April 14, 2023 by Love Zhaoying

[Paul Hexem]

11 hours ago, Rick Nightingale said:

To me that shows a very poor attitude from you.

4 hours ago, Maitimo said:

That is one of the most disgustingly obnoxious and unprofessional things I have ever heard from a supposed "business".  

Let's be fair for a moment. Here's somebody not actually breaking any rules, using well documented script functions, and believed they were providing a free service to people that people would appreciate. We've seen threads absolutely demonizing them, accusing them of all sorts of nefarious things, banning them from regions... And that's only including people that understand that no rules were broken and no hacks were used. The users that don't understand are behaving even worse.

I suspect we'd all be feeling pretty defensive.

[belindacarson]

28 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Let's be fair for a moment. Here's somebody not actually breaking any rules, using well documented script functions, and believed they were providing a free service to people that people would appreciate. We've seen threads absolutely demonizing them, accusing them of all sorts of nefarious things, banning them from regions... And that's only including people that understand that no rules were broken and no hacks were used. The users that don't understand are behaving even worse.

I suspect we'd all be feeling pretty defensive.

Well said

Very well said indeed.

 

[Sparkle Bunny]

4 hours ago, Maitimo said:

That is one of the most disgustingly obnoxious and unprofessional things I have ever heard from a supposed "business". 

Does anyone still think this shower are a business? They didn't manage to find anyone to buy their stolen data, they haven't (so far) started extorting protection money from people who want to be left alone, and they have never acted with the slightest hint of professionalism. Prok had the measure of them; they're a bunch of amateur trolls, nothing more..

Attempting to negotiate 'politely' with someone who is harassing you is a terrible idea. File an abuse report instead.

[belindacarson]

1 minute ago, Sparkle Bunny said:

Does anyone still think this shower are a business? They didn't manage to find anyone to buy their stolen data, they haven't (so far) started extorting protection money from people who want to be left alone, and they have never acted with the slightest hint of professionalism. Prok had the measure of them; they're a bunch of amateur trolls, nothing more..

Attempting to negotiate 'politely' with someone who is harassing you is a terrible idea. File an abuse report instead.

But it's not actually stolen data.

 

It's publically accessible information that anyone can get using legitimate lsl scripts.

 

Any RL info gotten is only what a user had chosen to put into their publically viewable profile, that anyone can see.

 

I'd say they did act with more than a little effort in revealing what data was collected and how.

 

Mr ban lines hud doesn't name his bots does he? Yet they scan land and nobody protests.

[Love Zhaoying]

55 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

We've seen threads absolutely demonizing them,

De debil hates it when you do that! Evurbody knows he's just a poor, fallen Angel!

ETA: I think some of the most recent comments are in response to a discussion of bots repeatedly trying to get onto Coffee's parcel as an apparent "spite" measure or something.  That's a little different than the "private/public data" cases you list.

Edited April 14, 2023 by Love Zhaoying

[Tommy Linden]

I am sure it is no surprise that this thread is being closed. I was hoping to leave it open since it was directing the original poster on solutions in how to address access concerns to their region/parcel, but this has clearly gone in another direction. If you have a personal dispute with someone, you can discuss it privately, but all of you know the rules regarding the forums.