[Strange random 'bot' following me message...]

22 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

FWIW, that message usually just means that XXXXXXXX resident has added you to a list of people that she finds interesting.  There are two different sorts of "Following" lists.  One is right here in the forums. If you want to follow someone, all you have to do is open their profile and click the appropriate button:

Then, whenever the person you are following posts something in the forums, you get a notice. If it really bothers you to have followers, you can click the "Options" button on your profile and select "Don't allow others to follow me":

 

The other place where people can follow you is on your SL profile, which you can see in your viewer or by going to my.secondlife.com.  If you click on the profile's People button, you'll see who is following you.  My alt's profile, shows that eight people are following her:

Presumably, those people will know when she has logged in to SL (but not where she is).  Again, if you want to prevent people from following you, you have that option among the settings in your profile:

Personally, I couldn't care less who follows me, but it does make a difference to many people.  Your choice.

EDIT:   Oh, among the other things I could have said but didn't, you can remove an individual from your SL profile's list of followers easily. If my alt wanted to, for example, she could open the "Followers" tab that I showed in that last image and then see a list of the people following her, each with a button next to it that says "REMOVE":

Thank you for your help.  I had already removed them from my followers list, as well as changed my privacy settings.   

However, this person or bot or whatever had an invisible avatar (not even an orange cloud) and was stationed in this particular sim where I was waiting while populating my inventory, this person is linked to an organisation that appears to be policing SL.   Now, I am not doing anything dubious myself and what freaks me out is what this 'organisation' has taken it upon themselves to do.   It is just plain weird.

[Strange random 'bot' following me message...]

No, it wasn't an IM, it was a notification from my viewer that this avatar is following me.

[Strange random 'bot' following me message...]

I was in a quiet region, just letting my inventory populate when I got a message that 'XXXXXXXXXXX resident' is following you',  they had some pretty weird stuff in their profile which kind of took me back a bit!   I have since made my profile private.    However I googled this avatar's name which led me to something that looks like organised harassment or maybe just organised griefing?  They seem to have a roster for it with plenty of 'staff'.  There is some language although it's mostly in Japanese that is translated on the site, some of it hints at policing the grid????

Not sure if I can include links but it's   [redacted by moderator]