Missing Girl Spam?

Yes, especially as the issue might hit a bit close to home for some of us.

I just searched their website for that name and could not find anything?

The OP of the intitial thread regarding this missing person gave a private email contact address. The, ALONE, is enough to sound very loud and shrill alarms off.........if this person is missing as stated and the Brazilian authorities have been notified AND the Brazilian authorities are in need of information from anyone here in SL THEY WOULD PROVIDE AN OFFICIAL contact email/real mail contact address. I looked the adress up.......it is a personal, private address (in Portuguese but understandable enough to know it's not a government address).

The plea sounds too fishy for me to even consider using the posted email address. At this stage there is no way to know what is genune, what is false, or if it's a scam/phising expedition. It was probably better for people who think they are helping to wait for a better way to get such information out..........now this person (who may be missing) is getting no help what so ever due to the suspicious nature of the thread(s) circulating right now. "Helping" in this case is hindering.

But again - if it's phishing it's not a very smart phishing operation. How many people will be in Brazil where she is from, and how many will have seen her? Isn't the email for people who have seen her or who have other pertinent information?

Yes............that is a good point. But, anyone sending an email to that address could very well be sending their personal email in return. Or, in order to verify that the person who is trying to help needs to give a real life name and real life address.

Just to fishy (or phisy) for my blood. Sorry to be so uncaring sounding.......but this whole mess stinks.

I guess so. Sure, it's possible.

I get so much spam though on accounts that I never gave out anywhere. Spammers can just do approximate addresses now, I think.

I agree that this is iffy, Peggy. And actually, I now regret even posting the e-mail address.

BUT . . .

To me, this is essentially the equivalent of putting up posters on lampposts around a neighbourhood when someone goes missing. I'd not suggest that LL do much of anything about this, except maybe tell us if they have information proving that this is a hoax. As for the SL community, I think all we can and should do is keep an eye out for her.

If it's a hoax or a scam, then "SPLAT": you can pepper me with overripe tomatoes . But, again, I'd rather err on the side of being concerned.

A repost of what I put in the other thread:

Something to think about that was brought up in one of my groups -- this could be a scam by someone that wanted to get the RL name of this particular avi out there for some reason, as some of the group notices about the disappearance did include her supposed RL name.

True it IS a possibility also - and another reason why everyone should recall that the TOS has to come first. No posting RL with SL.

But it could've also been an overeager person just trying to help.

Definitely true, on both counts.

Mostly, we just all have to remember the TOS and remember to always approach these things with caution and a bit of healthy skepticism.

And this just came in another group chat (names removed per TOS):

[13:31] xxx xxx: just got this message from xxx xxx, Linden have verified in Live Chat the the missing persons thing is a hoax.

Now, that is still hearsay from a third party, so who knows for sure.

Hey Scylla, just to clarify your E-Amnesty source, was this in the form of an official communiqué from the organization or was it something that was passed along in their group chat/notices in the same form as what has been going around in-world. I understand your concern and I think we'd all want to help as a community if this turns out to be true, but I'm a bit wary given that it seems difficult to find any rl verification about this case. Another concern would be the spread of potential hoaxes may in fact dilute the impact of real cases in the future where the sl community may be of assistance.

What the url and other contact info for "E-Amnesty International"?

The well known human rights group that I'm aware of is "Amnesty International", without an "E-".

Oh, thanks Oscar! I was actually looking for exactly that URL . . .

The notice came in world from millay Freschi, who is not only the head of AI-E (I don't know why I keep getting that wrong), but also AI's RL coordinator of "Virtual Worlds." I have met millay and know some others in the organization quite well; millay's integrity is unquestionable, as is her position with AI in RL:

http://www.rikomatic.com/blog/2009/07/amnesty-internationals-josh-rubenstein-speaking-in-second-life-on-thursday.html

That said, the notice she sent out was only in-world; I have seen nothing on the group's official AI page:

http://amnestyinternational-e.org/default.aspx

(Note that AI-E is an accredited Amnesty International chapter.)

This totally sounds like a hoax to me. Scylla, I hear what you are saying about millay Freschi, but I've never, ever heard of Amnesty International getting involved in a simple missing persons case. Surely she was passing it along in a non-AI capacity.

Yes, I agree it is outside their usual practice. Which is why, I suspect, there is nothing about it on the group's web site. But the notice was definitely sent out TO AI-E members. As to whether it is SUPPOSED to constitute an official AI notice, that's all I have to go on.

If I could get in-world, I could ask millay about it. Grrrr.

I got another one of those "Have you seen this little girl?" spam emails the other day.

It just looked so fake, didn't even have the girls name, location or any contact details on it. So what was I supposed to do if I had seen her? I didn't even know what country she was missing from.

If it hadn't come from friends that I would have to send it back up the tree through, then I would have been so tempted to reply back something like.

"I HAVE YOUR KID, SEND ME US$9,000,000,000.99 IF YOU WANT TO SEE HER ALIVE AGAIN"

Instead I just sent something back to my friends to pass back down the chain suggesting this was fake.
It also of course contained the email addresses of around 60 different people who were on the senders list each time it was forwarded. A nice catch for a spammer.

Fully agree with this. I think regardless of any "story" behind wanting to find out about a person, the TOS needs to be thought of first. That means before anything. I'm still yet to see any other websites or legitimate stories about this missing SL girl on the internet.

Well - looking at it another way - you have to find someone who thinks the story is worth covering (look at how many missing people are out there, at the Missing and Exploited Children website alone - how many of those have their own separate story on the 'net?).

Then you have to get them to write it. Then their editor has to approve it, after possibly taking time to edit it. All in all it can take a few days after it's been agreed upon as a story, to appear online.

If someone blogs about it or makes their own website, that might be quicker.

I also see that the emailaddy is something like a gmail account. I dunno, I didnt know this person and with nothing on her profile... I really wonder.

Well and like I said it doesn't matter what the "story" is. If there isn't any way of verifying any of the facts people in SL need to respect the TOS. There is no validity to any of the claims of even a person missing, let a lone her parents are looking for her, or better yet there was ever even a real girl who was in SL. If people are so easily manipulated into giving strangers information on friends in SL we're in for some troubles down the road. There shouldn't be any information given to anyone about another member in SL that violates the TOS unless there is some form of "legal" intervention.

But as I said elsewhere (I'm losing track of the conversational flow, though, with people quoting/replying to me back and forth, from other threads) the TOS shouldn't be broken. For that reason among others.

It should be noted again, I think, that Scylla did not break the ToS, but (instead) omitted the person's real information. People went in world to get that part.

Yep yep I agree. I don't think she did violate that at all. I'm commenting to multiple comments of comments made about comments on comments that were commented on.

Your daughter goes missing, let's say she's 18, after 4 days you say OMG she must have run away with someone she met in SL, let's contact Amnesty International, come one now how likely is that?