Serious matter

Dear all

a friend of mine in first life but not in SL has got a terrible accident and for a while he won't be able to use SL.

I would like to inform his SL friends but I know only his UserId and not his password.

Any billboard or special procedure to suggest?

Many thanks
Mik

If you can communicate with him it would be best to ask him his friends names. Theres no way to actualy find out that information yourself.

I'm sorry to hear about your friend, and I hope he recovers quickly.]

Check his profiles and see what groups he belongs to, then notify an owner of that group and ask them to send out a group message that just says, "______ is a member of this group and has been seriously injured in a car accident. We wish him a speedy recovery. if he was a friend of yours, please contact Mik Voight in-world for details."

Also, since you are mixing RL and SL here, make sure that this is what your friend wants. He may not want anyone in SL to know who he is, the nature of his injury, etc. Unless he explicitly tells you otherwise, do not release any real life info about him at all.

Quoted for Truth and Emphasis.

Be very careful. Giving out another person's RL information without consent is a violation of the disclosure clause. At it's worse , it could actually get you banned or at least suspended.

Ask your friend for one of his friend's SL names.

Then log in and tell that person; they will know what to do from there generally.

Yeah, this is probably all that need be done - but also consider what trout said - make sure your friend wants you to do this on his behalf, before you do it.

Isn't it amazing that almost without fail, Desmond says in a short sentence or two, what takes us paragraphs and sometimes entire threads to say?

Dear all

many thanks for the suggestions and the considerations on being careful on mixing RL and SL. I understand and agree with them.

I did not want to say in the first message but my friend passed away because of a stroke.
His family asked me to try to contact his friends in SL and inform them.

I started following the instructions of Trout Recreant (a nice name who reminds me of the great Kurt Vonnegut).

Let's hope I find the people who need to know.

However, it is weird to notice that RL and SL cross in cases like that.

Best wishes
Mik

"passed away" is a different issue entirely. I'm no sure why you'd lie about that in your first post. It makes me reluctant to help you further.

If his family has access to his email, they can use the password recovery tool on the SL website to either recover (or more likely) reset his password. From there, they will be able to "log in as him" and access his friends list.

Also of note.. if he had cookies enabled on his computer, all they need to do is visit this webpage from his computer, from time to time: https://secure-web11.secondlife.com/account/friends.php?lang=en

That will show which of his friends are online now.

Of course, my friends list has a lot of "litter" in it from random people I don't actually consider "friends"... but that page will at least get you started.

In the longer term, his family can approach Linden Lab in an attempt to gain access to the account. They have their own rules in this regard.

Not sure why you would not want to mention the death in the first post, then mention it in a later post.

maybe in this case you should contact someone at Linden Labs and let them know the situation. With proof (as harsh as this sounds, yes they might ask for proof, ie death certificate) they may be willing to edit his profile or something to reflect his passing. (also I think sometimes they will pass the account to those left behind, usually it has to be willed but that is a touchy area that only they can give you answers about)


my condolences on your loss

I'll prolly burn in Hell for this, but I'm naturally suspicious of any post that starts off "serious ___". Anyone who is serious it never crosses their mind to say so. But now we went from "for awile" to dead. Dead is not for a while. And there's other bits that don't add up either. Go play your heartsichord elsewhere.

The OP is a June 2008 so that may indicate something suspicious - however if this is genuine then naturally sympathies would be extended to friends and famlily.

People do die in RL, sad but true, and this of course means that they die in SL as well and friendships made in SL are just as valid as a friendship in RL, although typically friendships in SL are more of the "acquiatance" nature then "True" nature.

In this case it could be a matter for LL intervention to be honest. But my gut feeling would be that I agree with VW on this one.

I was a little stumped as to why the OP wanted his friend's password.
Was he going to log in AS his friend only to tell people that he had died if someone saw him and said hello? Besides being illegal that would be just a tad awkward.

I would also suggest that the OP contact the friend's family when it is feasible to do so to inform them that he/she had online friends that might need to be notified.

please, stop being so naive...
"his family asked him to contact the SL friends"...
yeah right. thats the first thing MY family would think off ;P

Cynical much?

My family knows how important SL is to me and I actually gave them a RL contact so that if anything happened to me my friend could let my SL friends know.

FaTeke

From the Knowledge Base, this is the link to the "Death and other 'First Life' worries" section:

fine, and that contact will then come here, make a new account to post and ask how he can get your password so he can log into your account to message all of them?

I'm just pointing out that its possible, although very unlikely, that this is a real request.

If I didn't leave contact information with my family and I died, they would know people would be worried about me and would want those people to know.

Its very possible they would contact a friend of mine who does not play SL to see if they could figure out a way to let my online friends know.

And it is conceivable that said friend would create a new SL account only to discover that he/she could not figure out how to do it, which could lead them to this forum to make an honest request for help.

Instead of just assuming someone is scamming, take a moment to think that maybe they are not.

That's all.

FaTeke

I don't understand the suspiciousness in this thread. I don’t see where the OP is asking how to obtain a password. I see the OP simply asking how to contact his RL friend’s SL™ friends. The only sentence that contains the word password is: “I would like to inform his SL friends but I know only his UserId and not his password.” I read this as meaning he can’t login as his friend to access his friends list, not a query for how to hack the password. Especially since the next sentence is: “Any billboard or special procedure to suggest?” Because the OP can’t login as his friend, he’s now asking for other ways to find and contact his friend’s friends.

Anyone suspicious of the OP shouldn’t post password hacking techniques. Anyone suspicious who doesn’t have proof the OP is a fraud, should try to be at least a little sensitive to the issue since your suspicions may be wrong.

--Hugsy

Regardless of whether the request is really legit or whether the reasons given are truthful, this is exactly how read the original post also.

Well, it's a little odd that in the first post, the OP said his friend was in an accident and wouldn't be able to log on for a while, and in a subsequent post, he said his friend died of a stroke. So the accident wasn't an accident and "for a while" is "forever". If it's true, my sympathies go out to the OP. It's possible the newness of his account is due to the fact that he created an account to go try to find his friend's friends per the request of the family. It's not that odd. My father was very active in a couple forums and when he passed, we made sure that there was a notice on those forums. It was very comforting to see the outpouring of support from his online friends. Of course, his death was not a surprise so we already had his passwords and the like, and we were able to log on and notify a moderator.

If his friend left the SL account in his will, then LL will transfer the account, according to their policy. If there was no will, I assume that wherever the friend lives will have some process to deal with people who die intestate, and any value in the account would be divided up according to those laws. I'm quite certain that LL will follow a court order that disposes of the account. As far as contacting friends, since there is no way to get information out of the decedent, the only way I can think of is the way I suggested. You can't get access to his friends list and who knows what that looks like anyway - those can be a mess. Notifying his groups is all I can think to do.

I know there's a lot of mistrust about this sort of thing. Even if this isn't a legit post, it's still a good thing to be thinking about. God forbid anything should happen, but you never know. You can be gone in an instant.

So very true. People are going to wonder what happened to you when I tie you to the bed.

......mental note.... *update my WILL to provide someone with password instructions on my SL status and personal requst*

OMG - fascinating post! Can CSI come in and do some investigating...very interesting and thought provoking!

If i died, would I want family members coming in and looking at my inventory and choice of clothes, landmarks, etc... (ROFL) OMG - talk about rollling over in your grave!!

Not trying to make light of the situation, if legit...just expressing how interesting this post is, never gave it any thought what would happen if I died - wow. do accounts "disolve" after so many years of inactivity??

~Sly

I came close to it and the first thing I thought of was throwing my pc in the trash before they carried me away.

All thinking i could do wont be changing my mind on this one.
And the reason why i wont let this kind of thing just rest and be quiet is because i find it really insulting how lightly such people play with their words to abuse everyones good will and feelings.