Being Unfairly Abused by Admins due to association with someone

Hi,

I am new to SL and I am looking for advice. I am not sure if this is the place to do it so please excuse me if this is the wrong place.

At the moment I am too scared to sign back into SL for fear of what may await me. And I have no where to turn for help.

I have friend within SL who seems to have caused trouble with many people. Because I am this person's friend, admins have been harrassing me and have even blackmailed me to stop being friends with this person. They have told me that if I don't stop talking to this person I will be banned. These admins have been monitoring my network connections to make sure I am not IMing this person on MSN and they are even secretly following my every move within SL.

I have done nothing more but be this person's friend and I have no involvement with this person's actions. But they continue to bully me and threaten me with banning.

Is this legal? And what can I do to stop this persecution?

I am afraid that if I file an abuse report that more bad things will happen to me and I don't know what to do.

They have now banned me from a section of SL for nothing more than being friends with someone they hate. I am new to SL and I do not know what my rights are as a user of this virtual world and if there is a higher power that can stop these people from harrassing me at every turn.

Am I allowed to mute admins? If I can, then maybe this will just go away because they can't bother me anymore?

Thanks for listening and I hope someone could please help me.


Wuffy

It is obvious, you need to polish your foil hat. If the foil does not have a shiny enough surface the waves will still reach your brain.

Is it legal? More likely: is it even possible within LL policies?

When you say "admin" are you talking about LL staff? If so, this story is utterly bizarre.

I'm guessing that you mean that your troubles are with the owners of a parcel, or sim, or business. In which case you likely have no recourse unless it's outright harrassment or they do something contrary to the ToS.
People can pretty much set the rules for their properties as they like. The can ban you only from properties they control. But they cannot monitor your network connection and do not have access to your IMs.

Mute the lot of them and meet with your friend elsewhere. It's a big grid.

B.

They are not SL Admins and therefore you can and should Mute them. They cannot Ban you from SL - only LL can do that. And LL would not be attempting to control who you talked to.

What makes you think that they are monitoring your network connection and/or secretly following you in SL?

Before you Mute them - go into your Preferences and turn on logging of chat and IM. Then get the logs from any conversations where they are threatening you and submit an Abuse Report.

ok..i'll bite....

are you sure they are secondlife admins?
just because the last name says linden does not mean they are "then lindens" sometimes.
you could be the target of a group of people who are just messin with you.
mute them. and abuse reportputting in as much detail a spossible with names, dates, copies of ims or open chat text.

good luck and huggssss.

I agree with the above. Some SIMs are privately owned and administrators (admins) have the right to allow anyone on them as they feel. After all, they are paying hundred of dollars for that right every month. My advise is to find another playground.

JulieAnne

I'm adding up 2 + 2 and coming back with 3.4 meters short of a quadratic equation

Something ain't right

1. Estate owners and managers can ban you from areas under their control for any reason or no reason. They are not associcated with LL®™ in any way and can not ban you from SL® nor from any areas not under their control.

2. It is not possible for them to monitor you use of MSN Messanger or any other software outside of SL®™

3. If these people who you claim are your friends are causing this level of trouble then perhaps you should reconsider who you choose to associate with.

Ah, presuming this is serious... nobody can monitor all that, especially the MSN IM's.

Well maybe Dick Cheney or Bill Gates could using their sekrit powerz, but I doubt either of them would bother.

There's only one good response to small-time regional admins who 'theaten' banning: tell them what you think of them (optional) and leave their area (important).

You don't have to put up with this and it's a really, really, big grid.

You and your friend are welcome in my lands at any time, and if anyone follows to harrass you there, they will have to deal with me.

Yeah, I dont' think LL would be monitoring MSN, that's for sure. Not only would that be stupid, it's illegal too. And if they remotely thought you were a threat to the grid, they'd simply ban you. Not hound you into leaving a person you might be friends RL side with.

So, does this person have the last name Linden? If not, record the chat, tell 'em you're recording the chat and WILL turn it over to Linden Labs if the harassment doesn't stop. Heck, turn over the recordings anyways, since it happens to be against the ToS for someone to claim to be a Linden Lab employee.

I'm curious as to what the friend has done, or if you're a bunch of sexual ageplayers. THAT I could see causing anyone to ban people outright.

Seriously, though, no one can monitor all that stuff other than the Government. Mute, log, AR and go elsewhere.

Unless their last name is Linden, these admins can only ban you from their tiny, tiny part of SL.

SL is ginormous, Wuffy - just ignore these 'admins' (unless they're Lindens) and move on. Also, if your 'friend' really is a trouble-maker and you're not interested in being banned or yelled at all the time, you might want to think some about that relationship.


Yep. I suspect the 'friend' may be playing several roles in this story...

You've pretty much already got your answer. These are almost certainly not Second Life Admins with any sort of sanction from Linden Lab. Nobody is monitoring your MSN IM's except maybe Homeland Security if your last name is bin Laden. Leave the parcel that you are having trouble with and go play somewhere else. Mute the people who are giving you a hard time. Problem solved.

Anyone claiming to be an admin, police, security, or any authority of the sort is a whole bunhca nothing unless they have the Linden surname. Beyond that, they are probably only role playing or operating independently for a parcel/region/estate. (^_^)

As for all this "monitoring"... Are they telling you this? How to you know your "friend" isn't simply using a group of people to play a joke on you? (>_<

Blackmail? Heh... What deeed yew duuuu? (=_=)

At worst... you're being messed with by silly and rude people. Mute them with reckless abandon. (^_^)y

I was talking to Elvis this morning about this very thing. You know, we share the commute on Bigfoot's private UFO.

Oh, and he wished you a happy Friday.

What's the Frequency Kenneth!

Hi Everyone,

I just want to thank everyone for answering my plea for help so quickly and making me feel better about Second Life. I am going to mute these cruel people and go about my business as usual. I never expected this kind of treatment from people I don't even know and mute will now become my favorite feature to protect myself from them.

I just got a TOS ban for 30 days from this group. I am assuming this means that it is THEIR TOS and not Second Life's. Am I correct in thinking that? The email says the list of places will follow.

Thanks again for all you advice,

Wuffy

Oh, good! They saved you the trouble and made you a list of places not worth visiting!

Welcome to SL drama
There are some very cool people in Sl and a few very UNcool you should list that group in your profile with a discription of what they did so others will know to stay away.

If you can still log into SL, it is simply a ban of some private estate and nothing to worry about at all - definitely not from LL as they would ban you from SL, not just places in it.

Issit the owner of the Gorean furry ageplay casino and Second Life bank?

Yep. Keep that list of places and never go back. Hell with 'em. If it was a TOS ban from Second Life, you wouldn't need to worry about a list of places - you wouldn't be able to log on.

Seriously, though - what did your "friend" do?

paranoid much?

find new friends.

problem solved.

Right: If there's a list of places, it must be the places that this bunch administers. (In theory, it could be some "networked blacklist" a la BanLink, but not BanLink itself where each subscriber decides which bans to enforce... but my guess is it's just an informal group of a few sims.)

It will probably be a bit frustrating for a while, because those places are probably where you have a lot of other friends. Perhaps you can invite them along on tours of other areas; when all is said and done, you all may find much better, more interesting places to hang out, and meet some other cool folks along the way. So, try to think of it as an opportunity to broaden your SecondLife.

(If it weren't for the line of bull they fed you about monitoring your every Internet byte, I'd even suggest that those admins could possibly know more about your "bad" friend's past behavior. But under the circumstances, nah: they're just self-important bullsh!tters.)

best response ever.