SPAM in SL

Anyone else notice that the spam in SL is steadily increasing? Notices from groups you never joined, offers of free gifts from places you've never heard of, landmarks for places you would have absolutely no interest in ... and on and on ...

I contact every single one of them and ask them to take me off their spam list. Most write back and explain how their particular notice isn't actually spam but it always is. Sometimes they figure that if I buy something from them then obviously I must want to get their messages. To these people I explain that I will be very careful not to buy from them again. Others insist that I must have signed up for their group sometime in the past. To these I explain that I'm quite sure I didn't but even if I did I'm not in their group now and their notices should have stopped when I left. I'm sure these are people who are just trying to grow their business, as I am myself. But they never get it, no matter what I say I can't make them see that their notices are contributing to a problem. Obviously they only care about their own business interests.

I'm a web developer in RL and have been online since forever and have watched the spam problem in email grow from similar innocent beginnings to the problem it is today. I can see the exact same thing happening in SL.

Anyone know if LL has any policies on this?

Send an abuse report, technically it is harassment if they continue to send you that sort of crap.

If you bug LL enough to do it, they'll ban those who are spamming.

and of course there are the ones who will hang out in the gateways to SL, and spam invite the newbies to their groups (usually advertising type groups)

Seeing that happen a lot lately on avatar island (a gateway into SL) and when I see someone in the new player area that is more than a few days old, I eject them, if they come back, they get a ban.
(there are of course, exceptions, being that it is a gateway to SL, people automatically have that location set as their home location, but they usually pop in and pop out as they log in and teleport off)

Some content creators automatically add you to a subscribtion list when you have made a purchase from them and everytime they have a new item or update you get sent the notice and notecard. If this becomes more popular I think there will be backlash.

You're right, Briana. This is what I'm coming up against more and more lately. It's like an opt out setup. Totally not acceptable because I have no way to leave the group, I have to contact them and convince them to remove me.

I'd like LL to come out with a policy against it. I'm not getting any huge amount from any one person so it's hard to call it harassment. One of the spammers I contacted, after a lengthy conversation about what spam is, finally agreed that what she was doing was indeed spam but then justified it by saying "oh, and I send out what? a whopping 5 notices a year?" And then tried to give me a free gift to, I don't know, placate me? Jeez. Another one said "well, I'm a customer too, I get these from people I don't know and I just click OK and they go away, no big deal." Uh huh, and what if every business was doing this? You'd be clicking them all the time and probably missing the ones you really do want.

No one wants SL to get loaded with spam like email is but if it's just their little business sending not too many then it doesn't count? What hippocracy!

After seeing what happened with spam in email I predict that without a policy against it that the exact same thing will happen in SL. Then you'll see businesses pop up helping you deal with your spam, filter out anything from a group you don't have in your profile or something. Something you have to run in the background and slow down SL even more.

Harassing the newbies is a different situation really. If you can get a newbie to voluntarily join your group so you can send them notices that's not spam, it's more akin to taking advantage of a minor. The newbies can always just leave the group when they figure out what's going on. But notices from people whose group you are not in and have never been in is spam, pure and simple.

Ok, I think I'm done ranting. I'm going to write LL and see if I can get them to take a stand against spam now.

I agree it will backfire on shops that do this. I usually buy whatever I'm interested in at the time; if the shop is quality enough and catches my interest I will go back on my own. I do not wish to get, nor do I benefit from, 'product updates' of the latest mini dress, strapless ballgown, or corset; most shops in SL are not unique enough (sorry) to warrant constant ad-sending and updates.

I don't think I have been automatically subscribed to a shop update list yet, but I do get invited to join groups or subscription lists after buying or even visiting shops, often. But I can see they are just trying to grow their business; I just decline. If they automatically added me though, that isn't kosher business practise imo.

I think that's the key.

One can't expect Linden Lab to police every annoyance. There's a certain level of being bothered that comes with using Second Life. That's no different than real life. There are real life legal remedies to harassment; but there is no law against someone being a jerk or being annoying.

Possibly the most frustrating thing about the unsolicited notices that come in Second Life is that many of the people using them in Second Life are not sophisticated enough to understand why they may work in real life but not so much in Second Life.

In real life, things like telemarketing work primarily because it's a numbers game- thousans of calls to find that .1% of the people are elderly with deteriorated faculties or are uneducated, and those are the people who give up their money to telemarketers. Second Life probably has far, far fewer proportions of the eldery or uneducated than real life.

Plus, unless one is IMing every avatar in Second Life, the IMs just don't do enough volume to successfully win the numbers game. If .1% were your target, you'd need 1000 people to get one successful hit.

Finally, telemarketers don't usually have to worry about ill will from the 99.9% of the annoyed people they call. They often aren't operating with physical stores where people come to them. Repeat business and customer referral is not part of their business plan. They get their names from lists, not people who have actually considered buying products from them previously. If the SL business is getting names from peopel who have visited their store, they are annoying the exact people who wanted to do business with them in the first place.

Telemarketers have to take their money over the phone, not rely on the customer to come into a store as a result of the phone call. Otherwise, the customer would have time to reconsider the transaction. The IMs in Second Life can't take money; they have to rely on follow-through.

While it would be nice to think that these unsolicited IMs would die out because they are ineffective, the fact of the matter is that they are cheap, and the people using them aren't sophisticated enough to figure out they are ineffective.

Still, Linden Lab can't chase down ever unsolicited IM.

Imagin, I totally understand where you're coming from, and I certainly noticed the same. I don't do shopping sprees often, but when I do, I noticed that lately almost every store spams you even before you set a foot into it - group invites, landmarks, notecards with store policy, notecards with welcome, notecards with this week's special offer... and so on. I even got a "Thank you for shopping, and I noticed you didn't subscribe to our group" message a few days back. Well, that was mostly because I DIDN'T buy anything there because the stuff was crap.

For god's sake, if I want a landmarks, I'll bloody well am able to click the button to take it myself. If I want to read the store policy, I look around for the prim that has it printed on. And if you want people in your group so desperately, put up something so they can join for themselves.

Honestly, all this "marketing" stuff makes me much more likely to never again set a foot into this store...

Imagin I fully agree with you over this issue. The other day i was in an adult area looking at the shops when i get SPAMMED with the following. " HI Im opening a new club /escort service and you looking like the kind of girl who could help me out while i help you make big $$$$" First off i was shopping but i responded to the IM and asked if he had a add at the shop, which he did not. Next I asked him why would he assume I would want to work for him or that i was even interested in such a profession. He did not answer then I pointed out he should of read my profile and not wasted his time.

I have taken to reporting these onsite spammers to the sim owner after all in this case they are trying to remove ppl from the sim. I also point out how happy would they be for me to spam their business most would not

LL already has a no-spam policy... from the ToS (Terms of Service - http://secondlife.com/corporate/tos.php):

"...(vii) upload, post, email or otherwise transmit any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, or promotional materials, that are in the nature of "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or any other form of solicitation that Linden Lab considers in its sole discretion to be of such nature; ..."

See also direct Linden responses to this topic in the past:

/327/2a/191395/2.html#post1558009 :


/139/8e/117720/1.html#post1121586 :


/139/e3/99911/1.html :


/139/19/99112/1.html#post980438 :


/120/a7/46376/1.html#post492816 :

The above says (to me at least) that LL has a pretty cut-and-dried 'no spam' policy. Since the posts above were written, a specific AR category has been created just for spam.... 'Help -> Report Abuse', then choose category 'Disturbing the peace > Unwanted advert spam'. Just select that, and provide relevant backup information.

IME it isn't really productive to try to convince a spammer that what they're doing is spamming... remember that Spammers Lie : http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=930 . Just file an AR and let LL sort it out.

Good luck .

Yes - although I don't mind clicking through one pop up, especially if it is 'sim rules' (maybe they had a problem in the past w/visitors, so okay) but four or five before I can even step forward?

More annoying - the ones that KEEP asking you. I should only have to say no one time per visit...(Reminds me of Dave Chapelle's "internet" skit with the spambot that followed him around the mall). I also know how to join a group and can see the big 'vote box' and 'subscription' box near the doorway also...without being repeatedly asked to do or join those things either.

Places that keep spamming you to take a landmark while they have their land set to disallow taking one the regular way, really puzzle me. Are they indecisive? Lol.

I will put up with most of it though, except places that are so small the pop ups are continually triggered...shop owners should really fix that. I leave those places, otherwise as long as I can get it to stop reasonably quickly I will usually stay.

I have grown my business just fine without doing any spam whatsoever. No greeter bots, no notecards, no group invites, no landmark givers. De nada. I include landmarks in my products and I pay for banner ads, classified ads and display ads.

The spam I find most annoying are group invites and mall rental spam crap. I used to AR but got tired of it. I will start AR-ing again I think, cuz Torley is asking us to and Torley is cool.

I AR the little bastards every time. I realize 'Unsolicited' is a big word for some people, but WTF doesn't know it means "didn't ask for it". same treatment goes for spam I get sent after I buy a product... seriously, if people wanted to know that bad, they'd sign up for it.

Tengu Yamabushi thank you so much for compiling this. I had no idea the policy existed but am very relieved to see it does and is so well backed up by the Lindens. I will just start reporting them. I see now that there is even a category called "unwanted advert spam" in thier report abuse tool. I'll be using it

I think that after LL bans a few delinquent spammers and the word gets out the rest will clue in pretty fast. It's gotten out of hand because the policy hasn't been enforced and I agree, LL can't be expected to chase down every one of them but I expect them to do something about the ones that are reported to them. It appears that sheeple in SL are pretty much the same as in RL. They follow the flock, if everybody's doing it then it's ok. When LL cracks down they'll all be whining that LL took away their advertising that they have been using all along. *sigh*

I really don't care what people want to blast at me when I'm in their store. I just leave when it starts. But that's their own property, if they think that works for them I really don't care. I can only hope that more people will boycot stores that do this, then it will stop. It's the spam I get through pop-up notices everywhere else that I have a problem with.

I ask the spammer when exactly I was asking for that piece of information or when I asked to join that particular group, I must have forgotten about it. Then they answer something like "oh, no, it is a bot that does that automatically to random people", and I AR them right away *G*.

What is this - group announcements? I thought you meant pop ups while in the store and/or unwanted automatic group announcements (don't we have to click 'agree' before joining a group?).

I've gotten group invites to places I've never been, from people I can't see anywhere near the sim I'm on. Not sure how that's done or why they'd think it would work but I always say no.

Hmmm, something disturbing occurs to me. If there are people out there reporting spam already then why is it still so prevalent? If merchants are so bold as to automatically add you to a group just because you've bought something then they either think what they are doing is perfectly fine or they know the policy but have no fear of LL doing anything about it.

Is LL even following up on these reported incidents?

Bleh, I hate being spammed upon arrival. I also hate being spammed after I leave. I hardly go out shopping any more, because of the growing number of places that spam the fun outta shopping.

While I love HippoVends for my shop, I hate them for others because others seem to have it set to automatically add you to "update groups" if you purchase so much as a toenail from them. Give me a freaking board to click, because if I *like* your stuff, I'm likely to join. I will not purchase anything if it makes me join a group. There are exceptions, but those I know I want to join the group in advance because of *actual* updates, like when I had the JEVN stuff.

My most annoying bit of spam is the landmarks or group invites to things that I have exactly zilch interest in going to or being a part of. I have had more gay bondage group invites (we're talking male on male.. and I'm female >.< and landmarks to -casinos- recently. These I AR without a second thought, because the first is annoying and the second is against LL's "rules."

*sighs* Almost makes me wish there was a spam filter in SL.