A Question of How to Report Stalking and Harassment of an Unusually Nature: HELP!

[franklincoln]

Hi, 

I have been being stalked and harassed in SLS for 5+ weeks now.  I was repeatedly having complete strangers come into my home, who would just stand there, and say nothing.  Day after day, some  times twice a day.

Let me say, and this is an understatement, that the sim's landlord said he could *not* do anything about security on his sim, that I was the only one to complain, that there it was my problem, and if I didn't like it I could leave.

I thought these might have been random mistakes by people at first, but after about 4 days, I had 2 different men at different times invade my home on the same day.  In both cases I managed to look at their profiles and saw the first one was 6 days old -- and the second one has been created that *same* day.  At that point I realized I was being Griefed.  And whomever it was who was harassing me what using throw-away avatars to do so.

This continued for weeks.  The second week I bought a security orb and the scan time was once a second and the activation time was 1 second.  Despite this some of these avatars still manage do get into my home.  I don't know how.

The other problem with this without going into a lot of detail, I have Panic Disorder.  So not only were these invasions very disturbing to me, but I also panicked while they happened, totally forgetting to use the Abuse Reporting. So out of maybe 20-30 on these attacks only 1 or 2 were reported,

I did stay in my home. After a few weeks while I was in SL, I happened to come home and the entire building that had been my house had been *deleted*.  Al the things in what had been my home were just floating in mid-air.

The landlord blamed me for for this, although I think from his behavior he likely did this himself. He then evicted me.

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so a few days ago I rent a skybox for security and also placed my security orb in it.  I had not been harassed since I left the previous sim.  HOWEVER..

Today I received in my personal email that someone named "athamon" was "Following Me".  I'm not even sure what that is in SL.  But when I looked at the profile, it has been created that same day and had no details had been added in it,*except* for one Pick which was for this group:

   "Men as Meat:  An adult group for gay and bisexual Men who are into extreme RL such as torture, rape, snuff...."

I have not the slightest doubt that this was done by whomever has been Grieving me and the choice of that one group was clearly meant as a threat against me.

The problem is I don't know how to report it. By itself it looks very strange, but given everything else that has happened I think there isn't any question of my continuing to being stalked and harassed.  Also this is not inworld, so I don't know what to do.

Can someone please help me?  I am scared.

                  -- Frank Lincoln (franklincoln)

 

[Qwalyphi Korpov]

The resident who provided the previous content, if any, has replaced it with this generic statement.

[Canoro Philipp]

for stalking and harrasing in rl call your local authorities. im sure they have deal with those cases in the past and know how to proceed.

only teleport to your home people you trust, its good that you have a security orb so the people that you invite dont invite other strangers, have the security orb set only to you when your guests leave, never give your home landmark to anyone who has not been invited by you to your home. its perfect that you have a skybox, that way the griefers cant figure out at what altitude your home is.

[Sammantha Koppel]

The good news is that it may not be griefers, especially if you can't think of any reason someone would do that to you.  I had a place a couple years ago where this same thing happened to me all the time.  Fortunately, they landed in my front yard instead of inside the house.  As it turned out, they were using an old landmark.  Seems my front yard used to be the landing point for a sex club.  Usually I igored them and they went away quickly.  Sometimes I chatted them up (I even friended one).  Only one got really obnoxious and went in my house and wouldn't leave.  My landlord gave him the boot.  Almost all of them were one to ten days old. 

My guess is that your old home was a previous landing point for a popular spot that might still show up in search.  The house disappearing?  Probably some freakish SL glitch. 

[wiked Anton]

that good advice, but you didn't supply a link or helpful instruction on where he/she could find this page.

 

[wiked Anton]

i tend to agree with samantha ( i think, hard to read you name when you hair is the same colour as the text) i hace had 2 places, one was private so i could set my security to friends or group mambers where i had a small private group. the other is a business so i have to leave it open to the public, and i get a constant stream of visitors who are using an old LM. They usually quickly go away. best way to avoit it is "buy" your land and set you land access to group memebers, and/or buy SWA security orbs/panels. If you own it you have more control over it an no idiot landlords to deal with. your panic attacks will soon deminish....good luck

[Ceka Cianci]

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wiked Anton wrote:

that good advice, but you didn't supply a link or helpful instruction on where he/she could find this page.

 

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he did two lines above the  image..

"You can make those changes in-world using viewer 2/3 or on the web at my.secondlife.com"

all you have to do is log in and it will take you right to your web profile..

[Ceka Cianci]

make sure you are not leaving clues about where you live in your picks and groups..

adding picks from a different location can help in making them have to work harder at finding you..myself..i usually add my picks at orientation island..

and my groups i always keep hidden because it's nothing for someone to take a run through your group locations to see if you are in one of those spots..

thats if they are following you around on the grid..

 

also if a landlord won't do anything..don't wait for them to kick you..find a new place with a landlord that is not a P*r*i*c*K

 

[Dillon Levenque]

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wiked Anton wrote:

i tend to agree with samantha ( i think, hard to read you name when you hair is the same colour as the text)

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If you hover your mouse cursor over the 'avatar' section of a forum badge (that's the upper left-hand corner, where the X'd out image box appears on your badge) the person's full name displays. And you can click there and go to the person's forum profile page.

[Marianne Little]

Hi, I also think that the place you rented had been a popular sex club. Often, people make "picks" in their profile where other people who read that, can click and teleport there. Some landowners even pay a few §L a week if avatars make picks of their land, because they want their land to show in so many profiles as possible.  Many don't bother to delete old picks. 

Also, if the land was owned by a group that let the members set "Home position" there, it is not possible to eject them with a security orb. A security orb send avatars home - but if their home is on that parcel, they stays there until they teleport away themself.

It was good that you left that land, I hope you just put this behind you. Your former landlord sound really like a unhelpful guy. I have had things disappear for me in SL too, as far back as in 2008, I rented a skybox and it vanished, leaving my furniture hanging in the air! My landlord just rezzed a new skybox for me, placing it just where the old one was. So this is not something new, your previous landlord should know that. I also doubt that you were the first renter to complain about strangers in that place. 

[Jennifer Boyle]

Just a couple of ideas.  If you buy mainland, you can control access yourself with the parcel access tools.  Non-adult mainland is available for almost nothing.

Make absolutely sure that you have not granted the ability to see you on the map to any friends.

I agree with the theory that the intruders were using old lms for some former tenant of the land you were on.

FWIW, I leave my house open to the public.  Someone else may as well enjoy it when I'm not using it.  I usually greet intruders warmly, and they are nearly always polite.  I have made a few friends who just wandered or teleported in.  AND, should one be rude, as the landowner I can eject and ban instantly.

[franklincoln]

I want to thank everybody for their help in this and their suggestions; I will read them more closely, but many seem they will be helpful, especially the one on how to stop people from "Following" me.

Let me comment on to things:

* The old Landmark possibility doesn't work.  You see the sim was set up so that anyone who did *not* live there would all land at the same point which was a fair distance away from my home. 

And that is what happened; all these avatars would land in that area.  I started leaving my mini-map open all the time when I was in my house so I could see who arrived.  If it had been a different sim once, landing where they did they would have to go outside to come to my house and whatever it might have been, it now looked like an Egyptian Oasis. And so many 1 or 2 days old avatars using *old* Landmarks?

Next when these stranger arrived, after a while they all began to come *directly* to my house and as I said it was a fair distance from the central landing point.  AND even if there were other people on the sim at the time, they would had *directly* for my house.  I even watched on the mini-map, just after I had installed my security orb, one of them circling my house as they lasted how far the security field extended from my home.

And finally, again, there was their behavior.  As I said they all started coming directly towards my home, nowhere else.

Also when they were able to enter my home, they would all just stand there and say nothing.  I tried IMing a number of times with many of these different avatar, and not once did they reply to me.  At all.

This wasn't an old Landmark.  This was stalking and harassment.  I've tried many times to come up with reasons why some of all this might have been happen and I've heard a lot of people try to just explain it away as just coincidence or something not threatening.   It even took me a week myself, after having these strange people show up in my home day after day, for me to even realize I was being Griefed.

Occam's Razor is a concept that suggest choosing from among competing hypotheses the one that makes the fewest new assumptions.  And the simplest explanation for *all* of these events together was I was being Griefed.

* On buying land, would that I could.  I just don't have the money and things recently took a very bad turn for me in RL.  I started using SL as a way to relax, have fun, and meet and make friends with new people to help be cope with all the Real Life stuff.  I still am, but the ongoing stalking has just added a sourness to many things now.

* Finally on the "there are many nice people in SL" someone I had gotten to know introduced me to 2 others people with which they owned a sim.  And they invited me to come and see it and get to know them.  And while I was there they gave me a skybox on their sim for no cost.  It is a *huge* skybox with a *huge* house on it, with a large front yard, a swimming pool, and a 2-floor house with many rooms, completely furnished, with a hot tub in the bathroom, and media hook-ups.  These wonderful 3 people did this because they knew that even while I has being stalked and harassed, I continued to try and help new people and others with getting to know SL, as trying to help them sometimes with major issues and problems in their RL lives.

It took me a while to even understand they were giving me a home because it was so unbelievable to me. 

Thank you again everyone for all your help.  It is very, very welcomed and appreciated.

                -- Frank Lincoln (franklincoln)

  

[Eileen Fellstein]

hmm, no way to tell for sure but you can rule out former residents on that spot getting inside the orb in the case of the one created the same day at least.

You've moved so kind of a mute point just be happy and move on unless it continues.

It kind of sounds like the landlord was someone that doesn't understand their land and security settings well. A lot of it could have happened mostly from them not having things set up correctly.

also if the land was divided oddly or even possibly contained a small patch of land with different settings within your lot somehow...lol, could actually be owned by someone entirely different altogether

 

[Deja Letov]

If they are landing at the landing spot for your sim and walking straight to your house, it's possble that you are looking at bots. Bots will land and walk straight to a coordination. They will then sit there and not say anything for hours. It might be what's going on.