Is it possible for another player to steal items from your inventory??? Please help.

I was just building and working on a new notecard to go with my home (you know, not really paying attention to anything going on around me), when I finally noticed an avatar standing right next to me. So I zoomed in to see what the person was doing and they were wearing my skin and clothes! How is this possible??

I IM'd the person and asked how they got my skin and clothing, and they immediately left without saying a word to me.

I custom-made that skin myself. It really upsets me to think that someone could just lift it from my inventory without my consent. Is this possible for someone to even do? If so, is there any action that I can take against them?

I have heard of this before, hopefully you got the person's name and AR'd them. It's some sort of program, I'm sorry I don't know much more than that but someone here will, I'm sure.

Sounds like a classic copybotting

I've heard of it, and it seems obvious that's what they did since you made those and no one else should have those otherwise, right?

But I don't know how it's done, only thing I can say is, in your inventory check 'properties' on the items and make sure all of the permissions are unchecked. Things like 'let others copy/modify/transfer' etc. If those are unchecked then they hacked in and I don't know what you can do.

Thanks for your advice, guys.

Ralektra, I did get the person's name.

Clarissa, yes the skin was mine personally. I've never sold it or given it away.
I just checked my inventory and all of the permissions were checked for that item, including "Anyone may copy"; but I know that I didn't check those. In fact I remember that right after I created my skin I made sure that none of those permissions were checked.
Can I still report them or will it do me no good?

no hacking here.. you were copybotted..
AR the person although its probably an alt of an alt

You can try reporting them, although I think the AR format lends itself mostly to things that are happening WHILE you report it, which isn't always the most helpful. Also it isn't that helpful if it's an action rather than something the person typed, but you can do your best w/it. It is probably worth a try.

I'd say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but that's probably not very much consolation.

If it helps though, I noticed that perms were wonky Monday in SL, it wouldn't let me change perms on things I made and wouldn't let me give full perm things away - the person couldn't save it. Is it possible people took advantage of this? Do they somehow know when these glitches happen then go around stealing?

I had someone ask if they could copy something I'd just bought, I said no, because the perm wasn't mine to give...I think they did anyway but since I didn't see it I can't do a thing.

It might have something to do with the new viewer. I know my opening screen was more insistent than usual that Version 1.20.17 needed to be installed NOW (even though I'd installed 16 very recently).

Or maybe not. I'm no expert on these technical things. I'm just thinking that if a large proportion of residents switched at the same time, it might muck up things.

I wondered the same thing, Clarissa. I had just downloaded the new update before logging in and was wondering if that had something to do with my perms being off...or on actually. That kind of confirms it.
I'm going to go through my entire inventory and make sure that all of my perms are normal.




hee hee I actually did think about that. A least they liked my skin enough to swipe it. lol Doesn't fix the matter but at least it's a little silver lining.


I just finished reporting the person, though I'm afraid that it won't do much good.

Copybotting ignores perms. Basically, the person running the bot is using a special client that intercepts the video stream coming into his/her computer, and "copies" the textures they are interested in, including skin textures. I have personally never been hit by a copybot, but it DOES seem odd to me that it would hit someone who happens to be wearing their own custom-made stuff. Almost as if the person running the bot knew you had these unique items.

There are copybot prevention gadgets, but I personally do not know if they work.

If it is a copybot, and it does sound like it is, then they didn't get the actual skin, they only got the uuid, they simply tricked SL into thinking the texture of your skin is the texture of their skin, there was an exploid a few months ago where they could get a copy of anything you are wearing and the original if it was no copy but that one got fixed.

So does that mean they could walk up and strip somebody?

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Sera good luck w/your AR, at least it will do something about it.

Thanks, Clarissa. I guess I'll just have to wait and see how things go from here.

Nika and Abigail, thank you for explaining the copybotting to me. I had no idea that programs like that even existed.




Are those gadgets okay to use in SL? If so I'd like to get one and see if it works. I'd like to prevent this from happening again if I can.

No, they don't work, all they do is spam the hell out of anyone unfortunate enough to be near one.

I'm sorry this happened to you, but there really isn't much you can do to prevent it happening again. If you can see it on your screen, it can be copied.

I agree with Stephanie, the anti-copybot devices are only irritations for non-bots and ignored by all others. If someone guarantees they work against copybot, they're scamming you.

No, there's not much one can do against the copybot, except AR them.

Luckely no, you would still be wearing everything untill you detach it, afterthat you could nolonger attach it if it's no copy.
It was never widespread tho becasue it was fixed before it became public knowlidge although it was open for over a month.

I do not think this is correct.

Copybot only allows someone to make duplicates of the prims and textures for the accessories that you are wearing, and does not get any scripts in those prim objects.

It only gets the composite "Baked" skin textures, where the skin, shirt, undershirt, etc are all fused into one layer. It does NOT get the skin, shirt and undershirt as seperate, independantly usable layers.

And it does NOTHING to the permissions of what is in your inventory or of what you are wearing. It merely ignores the permissions restrictions while making it's partially-successful copies.

So they can clone your apearance, but they could not change the shirt and keep the rest. What they get is just a pile of textured prims with themselves as "creator", but no scripts.

It steals a COPY of most of what the viewer can see, but it can't steal the contents of those items, or anything else in your inventory.