Simple things we need to protect ourselves....

[Charity Colville]

Linden Lab needs to finally give residents the tools to protect themselves from griefing and harassment. The thousands of abuse reports we all file have no effect and there are no consequences for bad behavior when people can create unlimited alts. We do not need to have a persons private information for Linden Labs to give private region owners, who pay dearly for that right, be able to ban abusers by IP address. It is time for Linden Lab to be concerned about their paying customers rights and stop protecting the rights of griefers and the monsters using tools to copy original content. Second Life should be about "quality" not "quantity" and LL needs to stop worrying about the number of residents they can boast about to corporate clients and finally have REAL numbers of who is playing Second Life and stop all this junk with unlimited alts and bots.

[jwenting]

banning people by IP does more harm than good. Most if not all responsible site operators don't use the practice.
Not only does it not work (a griefer can simply get himself another IP address, takes but a few minutes) but it blocks legitimate users who end up with the blocked address afterwards through DHCP.

It also blocks legitimate users who share the same IP address with a griefer because they for example live together (think students in a dorm) or otherwise use the same connection (internet cafes).

 

In effect then, what you suggest would be griefing on a massive scale, denying dozens if not hundreds of people access to SL while not hurting the people you want to block at all.

[Charity Colville]

Perhaps you are right, but I am searching for solutions we can actually implement. I have run busy regions in SL for many years. Years ago, when we actually had Lindens answering the phones and responding to abuse reports, things were very different.

Now, an avatar can come to your region and create utter chaos....abusing the owners, staff, and guests. They are banned and all the appropriate abuse reports are filed. Should be done with them, right?

They come back over and over and over again using alt accounts causing the same misery for all involved. The process is exhausting. For those who have never experienced this, it is impossible to understand. I realize that some may end up banned by association, but the money we pay to own these private regions versus these free accounts? To me the rights of those who are paying dearly for service should get some protection.

Can they get a new IP...sure they can...but most of the dingdongs engaging in this behavior have short attention spans and if it wasn't as easy as LL is making it for them....they would be less likely to engage in this nonsense.

[namssab1nad Piers]

Your wrong about them being ding dongs.  Most of them (like 99%) are extremely tech savvy.  Thats what they do in their RL jobs or are in school getting degrees in computer technology.  The problem is they were not raised correctly and have never learned to respect other peoples property or efforts.  I agree, something needs to be done but banning by IP address is not it.  Neither is making everyone have to pay something to join SL.  Most of those same people are spoiled by rich parents.  So that is not the solution.  .

Personally, I think nobody should be able to join SL without first either giving a credit/debit card info for every account they create (thus giving an identification path) or giving their full name, drivers liscence numbr, address, and phone number, and a valid e-mail address.  The phone number cannot be an unlisted number either.  Thus again you have a traceable path.  An e-mail is sent with account number and special one time phone pin number.  They then have to call from the number listed on sign up and enter the special one time pin number.  This has to be done for every account (alt) set up.  Then if one of them starts to do anything in SL, the company can on its own proceed with legal proceedings or on request work with any victims in SL in taking the scum bags to court in civil proceedings.  Since alot of those scumbags all know each other, if one is dragged through the mud in court and has a big award hanging over their heads (read as having all their computer equipment seized to settle a judgement), then they might think twice about it.  Their parents may not be to happy either since its the parents that will be ultimitely held responsible for any awards handed down by the courts.

[Charity Colville]

Excellent solution! Thank you! I hope Linden Labs listens!

[JoJo Aurelia]

Why kind of establishment are you running that has so many issues with griefing? I've had a few run-in's but they're few and far between. And not where they're coming back for more and more. That's a lot of effort. Who'd ya piss off?

[Rival Destiny]

Very well said!

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

---

namssab1nad Piers wrote:

Their parents may not be to happy either since its the parents that will be ultimitely held responsible for any awards handed down by the courts

---

This is not necessarily true.  Even if they are a minor, it depends on the jurisdiction.  In the US the parents can only be held liable for the settlement if the law in the place of legal jurisdiction says they are and the age the minor has to be -which varys from state to state.  Some that hold parents liable also state you have to prove the parent knew about it or was legally negligent in some way.

[Dilbert Dilweg]

It's a worthless fight Sweetie. You have the nay says that think everyone plays from internet cafes and the families who get banned don't have the ability to discuss their own problems with their family for getting banned.

@ jwenting Most all websites practice IP banning because it is the only action at their disposal. LL bans IP constantly which is why residents have the ability to appeal the ban.. Any responsible site owner knows that  possibly innocent people can get banned but they  can manage their own systems according to their wishes and not someone elses. As well as they can suffer the consequences of maybe banning 1 or 2 innocent people. It's not like they are being banned from Sl entirely. It should be the choice of the person paying the damn  bills not the choice of the greifer. Banning 1 Ip or range doesnt cause a large scale issue for many and if it does, any responsible site owner casn have an appeals process set up to manage that possiblity

Linden Lab is going to allow what they want and stop what they want. If LL wants to let greifers greif you. They will. That's pretty clear LOL

Here you are forced to put up with the abuse while paying top dollar for your shared server

Princess you have to remember that club owners are the minority in SL. Your experiences are not what the majority experiences . So your concerns will be blown off for the most part. But one can stand at a Info hub for  5 minutes and get greifed. Any popular place willl experienc e the same thing. and trhe only thing anyone can say is " deal with it"  lol . Tooo much cost of tier to just deal with it lol

@Faye It doesnt take much to piss somone off sometimes and if they are nutty enough  (which there are many in SL) they will just start stuff just for the hell of it, or they are drunk or drugged up. Running a popular place attracts many. Even your rivals who are jealous. I had 1 person fabricate thaT  i kicked him out and i didn't. and he came back with atleast 12 alts to harass me on a daily basis. Yea  lot of effort and a lot of ignored abuse reports. a lot of problems = no fun. No one should have to endure 2 years of the same **bleep**Hole. And it should not matter. Pissing somone off should not give them the ticket to act up

There is one girl who reads these forums and  has started messaging me again the last few days with her alt to greif me lol Thats how nutty some can be lol . Nuttier than a porta potty at a penut festival

[Nova Convair]

I hear of griefers here and there, but met only few. If I have a few seconds I can protect me and watch the show. In my home sim I can use my godlike powers - thats entertaining. And if all goes wrong I have to teleport. What a terrible fate

There are surely single cases where people are upset for good reasons but that shouldn't result in useless suggestions like IP banning. There are 2 possible results of an IP ban:

1: nothing happens and 2: someone gets hit that has nothing to do with the griefer

The chance to hit the griefer is next to zero so no need to even discuss that.

[Ceka Cianci]

Regardless ... what is the point of IP banning if all the person has to do is take 5 minutes & get another IP addy? 

 

You are banning a whole whack of people who share the same IP addy and the guy is laughing his bum off as he pops back in 5 minutes with a new alt and another IP address.

There is even an entire country that shares the same IP addy!

Makes absolutely no sense to IP ban.

Use the land tools ... mute and ignore.  The problem with most is that they engage - big mistake from the get go.

[Monti Messmer]

Every fence we put up people will find ways to get over and other people will cry that they can´t enter.

At least 2 other MMORPG´s i know have a bunch of moderators online who can be called ingame. This wouldn´t work on SL because of the size. But file a ticket about griefing ... using a candle to melt the north-pole

Let´s see this thread more as a disussion of what to do and less teaching of how to get around IP-bans or that.

I´m sure alot IT nerds are on SL, working for big companies running forums .... maybe some of their ideas could be adapted to work for SL.

Give RL information could help solve but i can hear the people screaming about privacy; while at the same time they post their life on Face... or blog or Twitter it :matte-motes-agape:

Lets be freaky ! How about an Avatar TP into a sim cannot IM others until the owner approved it. Hold wait dont kill me its just one of this ideas that with some good thinking work out. Forums = Discussion

Monti

[Jennifer Boyle]

---

Dilbert Dilweg wrote:

It's a worthless fight Sweetie. You have the nay says that think everyone plays from internet cafes and the families who get banned don't have the ability to discuss their own problems with their family for getting banned.

---

I never played from an Internet cafe, but I've played from plenty of hotels.  It seems to me that if I were a griefer and if I got IP banned, the effect would have been to prevent all future guests at the hotel connecting, while all I would have to do to circumvent it would have been to pick a different hotel next time I was in that city.

Now, my home IP address, while officially dynamic, never changes.  However, until about a year ago when I changed services, it was truly dynamic, and I could change my IP address in a few seconds.  So, again, anyone with the kind of service I used to have would be immune to an IP ban, but the unfortunate person who got the address that was banned would be inconvenienced.

It's also possible to access SL via a proxy server, which I suspect a dedicated griefer would readily do.

I can imagine that people who are enduring sustained griefing could feel so desperate that they want to try something, anything, that might bring relief.  It just seems to me that advocates for IP banning assume that the griefer they want to exclude is associated with a single IP address, which isn't true for many people, and can be purposely avoided by people who want to.

So, from my perspective, it looks like an IP ban can be easily circumvented by the actual target and is likely to exclude many innocent people.  I also suspect that the kind of people who are griefers would see it as an additional challenge to overcome, not something to just accept.

If I am wrong in my thinking, can someone explain why?

 

 

[Dillon Levenque]

---

Jennifer Boyle wrote:

---

Dilbert Dilweg wrote:

It's a worthless fight Sweetie. You have the nay says that think everyone plays from internet cafes and the families who get banned don't have the ability to discuss their own problems with their family for getting banned.

---

I never played from an Internet cafe, but I've played from plenty of hotels.  It seems to me that if I were a griefer and if I got IP banned, the effect would have been to prevent all future guests at the hotel connecting, while all I would have to do to circumvent it would have been to pick a different hotel next time I was in that city.

Now, my home IP address, while officially dynamic, never changes.  However, until about a year ago when I changed services, it was truly dynamic, and I could change my IP address in a few seconds.  So, again, anyone with the kind of service I used to have would be immune to an IP ban, but the unfortunate person who got the address that was banned would be inconvenienced.

It's also possible to access SL via a proxy server, which I suspect a dedicated griefer would readily do.

I can imagine that people who are enduring sustained griefing could feel so desperate that they want to try something, anything, that might bring relief.  It just seems to me that advocates for IP banning assume that the griefer they want to exclude is associated with a single IP address, which isn't true for many people, and can be purposely avoided by people who want to.

So, from my perspective, it looks like an IP ban can be easily circumvented by the actual target and is likely to exclude many innocent people.  I also suspect that the kind of people who are griefers would see it as an additional challenge to overcome, not something to just accept.

If I am wrong in my thinking, can someone explain why?

 

 

---

You're not wrong at all, in my opinion. There can be a benefit to IP bans, though. In another discussion here someone who worked as 'security' for a fairly large forum described his methods. If a troll or otherwise disagreeable entity was booted from the forum, the IP address was noted. Any brand new identities trying to comment with the same IP were blocked. It was a very temporary thing and I don't believe the bans lasted more than a day. It was only effective 'in the moment'. Clearly any policy of that scope would require MASSIVE resources to work in SL.

[Charity Colville]

I started this thread because I want people to have some consequences for their actions. My husband Dilbert (who posted earlier) and I have run some of the busiest regions in SL. Our first club, when we owned it, generally ran at 90k+ traffic, and the one we just sold, between 70 to 80k. It is impossible to run a venue that size without having to do deal with some people behaving badly.

Instantly some of you jumped on the word "griefer" and saw in your heads something other than was meant. It was also interesting to see some jump to the conclusion that if our griefing was so bad...."what did I do to piss people off?" Harassment and abuse can come in many forms. Our regions were always "PG" and we would often have to ban people for foul language and nudity. It is very interesting how angry some people will get when they are banned from a region, even when the ban is completely justified and the region rules are posted for all to see. Even when they are given warning. Unless you have walked a mile in our shoes, it is very difficult to understand. The percentage of my valuable time that I was spending having to deal with "babysitting" people who find it funny to be able to circumvent the ban system, was becoming overwhelming. If it was just me that they were harassing it would be one thing, but they would come back over and over as different alts and make my staff miserable, and make my guests leave just to avoid having to deal with stupid crap.

The abuse of alts needs to be stopped for many reasons. There is no GOOD purpose for anyone to have dozens and dozens of alts. Banning by IP may not be the answer, but having people create an identification path through credit cards and drivers license or ID numbers is another alternative. Many people file frivolous abuse reports, so I am sure it is difficult for LL to sort through and find legitimate problems. I have had guests come to me and ask me to report an avatar for some pretty silly things...."So and so is seriously UGLY, you need to report them"...."So and so just called me a b*tch"...when they are perfectly capable of derendering or muting another avatar they find offensive. (I swear those are real...lol)

There needs to be some culpability and consequence to bad actions by people in Second Life. If Linden Labs doesn't have the resources to handle all the abuse reports, then private sim owners who are paying almost 300 USD per month for a sim should be given the tools to keep out someone they want to stay out....from THEIR REGION. We should not be forced to waste our time dealing with the same people over and over again because they think harassment is fun and they have nothing better to do. I have lots better to do.

[Dillon Levenque]

I don't know if you 'replied' to me just because my post was at the end of the line, but if your comments were directed at me you seem to be grouping me in with comments I did not make. My sole contribution was to mention a way in which blocking by IP address would be workable. I don't think it can work in SL—even if sim owners were given the ability and paid for the security people. In my example it was used to block almost instantaneous responses to a forum. Things don't happen instantaneously in SL. IP bans in SL are in my opinion likely to cause more problems for innocent users than they do for griefers.

I don't have a solution. I don't have an alternative. I agree with you that there needs to be some culpability. I just don't think IP bans do anything to provide that. For the record I would have absolutely NO problem with changes to the abillity to create alt accounts, including going back to what I've learned was the original scenario: all users paid. I just don't think that will happen, given what I've read.

[Marigold Devin]

I can fully understand your frustration, but LL have put plenty of measures in place, and it is unlikely that they're going to start charging for accounts, because that would discourage such a lot of would-be new users, and LL don't know that whoever is creating a new alt is doing so in order to overcome a recent ban for griefing. (Look how many times these forums get spammed by obviously the same person/group of people, night after night.)

Although, if somehow the registration software could recognise IPs of banned people and deny access to those IPs until a $10 fee is paid, that might prevent some of the griefers from entering, and only penalise a few innocent people who are trying to register for the very first time.

The biggest problem is that not everyone realises that the best thing to do when a griefer gets within range, is not to feed it any kind of attention, but to simply block/mute it.  Everyone reacts in a different way, and in a venue as busy as yours, someone is bound to do and say something that just encourages the griefer to continue in their quest for childish kicks. 

If everyone would just ignore the griefer completely, put them totally into the land of the non-existent, then the griefer would get bored and move on.

Whether people are paying a lot of money for their Second Life or not, they should all be entitled to grief free enjoyment. No way do Linden Lab have enough staff to be able to dedicate one of them to man the busiest venues in order to be right there, on the spot, to deal with a griefer/alt of a griefer, the moment they arrive.

At least it's a lot better than in real life where people get violent and ugly, and often innocent people get hurt and real blood gets spilled. In SL, it's really only like name-calling, and can be shut off easily with block/mute/eject/AR, but as I say, not everyone realises this is the best way to deal with the griefers, and this isn't something that can be added in with the initial orientation process, as in spite of how it probably feels to you and some other people, griefers make up only a small percentage of total residents.



 

[Jennifer Boyle]

I sure don't have the answer.  I think it would be very counterproductive for LL to do away with free accounts.  I probably would not have ever tried SL if I had had to pay to just find out if I liked it or not.

I don't know if requiring credit cards for everyone would work, as I understand that it is possible to buy a prepaid card for cash, enter a fictitious name and address for it on the Web, and use it to pay for SL.  Also, I believe that in some countries it's not common for people to have credit cards.

As for things like driver's licenses, the only way I can see LL checking them would be to require a scanned image be submitted, which I would imagine would be quite offputting to many people and would be very vulnerable to falsification through the use of altered images.  And, as I said before, I think the people that need to be kept out because of bad behavior are going to take any measure LL puts into place as a challenge to be overcome.

[Charity Colville]

I don't know the answer either. What I DO know, is that for many Second Life residents, harassment via alts is an issue...particularly for people like me who deal with residents in volume. Each computer has its own identity...perhaps just limiting the number of accounts that can be created from one dedicated computer?

My husband and I live in the same house, use the same network, and different computers. There are companies that can clearly tell us apart. I am not a network engineer or all that brilliant, so I am not sure how it all works.

There has to be an answer. We can't continue to let single individuals create dozens, and perhaps hundreds of accounts from the same computer.

[Marigold Devin]

I don't know how it all works either, but I do agree that it shouldn't be possible for the obvious repeat griefers (and spammers) to keep being able to create alts. We have all this modern technology at our fingertips, and so many extremely clever people who know how to use it, and yet a lot of the time it is sadly abused. 

Look how many times - almost every day - we get the same type of spam cropping up on these forums; some days the spammer creates 3, 4, more alts and posts the moment they see no mods or Lindens actively logged into the forums. 

This is why I can imagine why people such as yourself and the others who run very busy and successful places inworld feel so extremely frustrated.

And the saddest part of all of this is that those people who choose to grief and spam are undoubtedly extremely intelligent people, it's just they have too much time on their hands and don't know how to channel that intelligence into something more worthwhile. 







[Dilbert Dilweg]

---

Jennifer Boyle wrote:

---

Dilbert Dilweg wrote:

It's a worthless fight Sweetie. You have the nay says that think everyone plays from internet cafes and the families who get banned don't have the ability to discuss their own problems with their family for getting banned.

---

I never played from an Internet cafe, but I've played from plenty of hotels.  It seems to me that if I were a griefer and if I got IP banned, the effect would have been to prevent all future guests at the hotel connecting, while all I would have to do to circumvent it would have been to pick a different hotel next time I was in that city.

Now, my home IP address, while officially dynamic, never changes.  However, until about a year ago when I changed services, it was truly dynamic, and I could change my IP address in a few seconds.  So, again, anyone with the kind of service I used to have would be immune to an IP ban, but the unfortunate person who got the address that was banned would be inconvenienced.

It's also possible to access SL via a proxy server, which I suspect a dedicated griefer would readily do.

I can imagine that people who are enduring sustained griefing could feel so desperate that they want to try something, anything, that might bring relief.  It just seems to me that advocates for IP banning assume that the griefer they want to exclude is associated with a single IP address, which isn't true for many people, and can be purposely avoided by people who want to.

So, from my perspective, it looks like an IP ban can be easily circumvented by the actual target and is likely to exclude many innocent people.  I also suspect that the kind of people who are griefers would see it as an additional challenge to overcome, not something to just accept.

If I am wrong in my thinking, can someone explain why?

 

 

---

tHERY DONT HAVE SINGLE ip ADDRESSES  of course they can change, but you can range block them and the other paRT  of being able to have their IP is to send a letter to therir ISP  provider about their abuse using their services and they get shut down

 

As it stands now a resident will have to hire a lawyer and get law enforcment in volved just to deal with a bad seed or stalker and pry info from LL. to gasin the users IP  this is wrong and should not be like this

[madman626 Fall]

Well you might say that but i think we could get to use IP ban and I tell you why ,, why couldn't I have IP ban I pay for a sim and can't keep them ban from my sim ? I could have every tool to help me ban them even a IP ban whos cares if legitimate users get ban too there be no griefer yeah yeah you say they can get around it well make them do more work then I don't care I tried of banning and they keep coming if I could IP ban them it will give me a lil time before they show up again,, I pay for my sim I could be able to keep any one out that I want out .

[Ceka Cianci]

hire a security task force..thats what we did at GOL when our traffic was in the 90k's to140k's which was a long span..

once in awhile we would have griefers show up and they were delt with..

we had more problems with drama popping up here and there than we did griefers..

about the worst we had was some mario cubes popping up every once in awhile and it was handled pretty quickly..that or particles..security would get on it right away and also would head off any possible attacks as well..

i've walked in those shoes for a few miles myself in a few places..

if you are kicking up that kind of traffic it's worth having a security team..

[Jennifer Boyle]

---

Charity Colville wrote:

 Each computer has its own identity...perhaps just limiting the number of accounts that can be created from one dedicated computer?

My husband and I live in the same house, use the same network, and different computers. There are companies that can clearly tell us apart. I am not a network engineer or all that brilliant, so I am not sure how it all works.

---

I don't know enough to know what's feasible, but if the LL servers could identify particular computers and blacklist the ones that needed to be, it seems to me that that would go a long way toward solving problems with serial griefers, without the serious drawbacks of IP banning.

 

 

[Dillon Levenque]

---

Jennifer Boyle wrote:

---

Charity Colville wrote:

 Each computer has its own identity...perhaps just limiting the number of accounts that can be created from one dedicated computer?

My husband and I live in the same house, use the same network, and different computers. There are companies that can clearly tell us apart. I am not a network engineer or all that brilliant, so I am not sure how it all works.

---

I don't know enough to know what's feasible, but if the LL servers could identify particular computers and blacklist the ones that needed to be, it seems to me that that would go a long way toward solving problems with serial griefers, without the serious drawbacks of IP banning.

 

 

---

Every computer, or more accurately every network interface (lots of computers have more than one of those) has a unique identifing number. It's called a MAC. That number is included in every packet the computer puts on the network. Thus a computer at the other end can identify different computers using the same IP address.

Unfortunately, falsifying the MAC (called 'spoofing') is free and easy and there are plenty of available programs that will allow a hacker/griefer to use a false MAC. Also, for next to nothing (as in less the twenty USD) you can get a USB device with a network interface, plug it in, run the install, and in about 3 minutes be sending with a different MAC from the same computer.

There aren't any easy ways.