Need help right away EMERGENCY

Need to contact LL right away. Locked out due to login issues on grid. Wife is being attacked at this moment by a harasser. Reports have been filed with LL from both of us. He has been muted by both of us. Now going on group chats and attacking her right now. If anyone see this help me contact LL by phone right away

Um, SL is an online world -- you or your wife cannot be PHYSICALLY HURT.

If it is that major of an issue and she cannot mute/ban/whatever, tell her to click that little X in the upper right corner

Have her file an Abuse Report while she is inworld. (I believe Abuse Reporting is under "Help" on the top menu bar). She can include chat logs or (better) pictures of the screen that show the harassment (choose "show interface" in the snapshot dialog).

If you are Basic (non-premium) accounts, that is about all you can do. If you are Premium accounts, you can go on Live Chat and try to solicit the help of a support Linden.

And yes, as Lil said, it's all just words, words, words ...
.

Could be just animations, too.

Or particles.

Or sounds.

Hmm..

Sorry to tell you this; but, it's not an emergency unless someone is actually bleeding. If I were you, I'd tell your wife to log off.

1) Contact the people in the group chats and ask them to cut and paste some of the harassing statements into an Abuse Report on the guy.

2) Make a alt and log in and help her

3) Login on a desktp program that allows you to communicate with SL but not have any visual contact. http://radegastclient.org/wp/

Lol

I'm sorry, but it just has to be done.

Hmmmm

People respond to in-world interactions in different ways. Yes, the OP and his wife can't be physically "hurt." That doesn't mean that the emotional damage that might potentially be inflicted is any less "real."

Depending on how immersive one is, how important one's in-world relationships are, etc., "logging off" isn't necessarily a particularly helpful response. It might work well if SL were merely a "game." But, as we are continually reminding survey-takers and others, it's rather more than that, isn't it?

I don't mean to be critical, but I think it should be possible to be a bit more sympathetic, and a bit less contemptuous-sounding, of someone who clearly IS upset by what is going on in-world, even if his attitude to the impact of the in-world interactions is different from our own.

Or would someone care to argue that we are merely "idiots" if SL affects us emotionally?

Billy, there isn't a whole lot of information to go on here. What kind of harassment? Is this long-term, or is it a one-off attack by a griefer? Is it merely verbal? It's a bit difficult to offer much concrete advice beyond the lodging of an AR without more information.

It's 5 hours or so since the original post, isn't it?

Response time is a critical factor when dealing with an emergency.

You may be right. But my sense, from the fact that the harasser was taking this into group chat, is that this is more than a case of spamming a sim or pelting his wife with penises. This is admittedly speculation on my part, but I'm betting that the effects of whatever happened are long-term, and would require a long-term response, especially if it involves slander, the publication of IM logs, or other things that might impact upon one's in-world reputation.

from profile "Ok real life. I'm a Firefighter" he knows much better than you what an emergency is - so don't go telling him what an emergency is >.<

The only kind of "attacking" that can happen online would be either defamation or violation of the disclosure policy. In general both would be dealt with by group moderators. Strictly speaking your only recourse is to report the abuse online through the viewer which you said you have already done. The purpose of live chat is to provide technical support and billing support so I don't recommend trying to use them to speed up the resolution of an abuse report. There is nothing they can do that you haven't done already by filing an abuse report.
I could provide you with phone numbers but there is no real point to it. Linden Lab will not address online harassment issues over the phone. Phone support again is limited to technical and billing issues. Generally speaking the only instances where Linden Lab will address harassment issues over the phone is when it has escalated to offline harassment and law enforcement authorities have become involved.
I doubt this is a real emergency. The only instance I could think of where online harassment would constitute a genuine emergency is if it involved disclosure of real life information that would place a person in imminent danger, e.g. if a person was in the federal witness protection program and a person was disclosing their real life information. In the unlikely chance of something like that, it's something that requires the involvement of law enforcement first not Linden Lab.

Scylla, I don't think there is any argument that SL affects people emotionally, half of us wouldn't be here if it didn't. However, if there is danger online, the proper response is to log off. There is police force in SL. No phone call to LL is going to bring them out for anything short of a full blown grid attack, that's not what they are there for. There are human beings behind our keyboards and they need to act like rational, responsible adults. There are no laws against people being a**holes and the only time we have control the behavior of others in SL is when we are on our land can control access.

What the OP did here was the RL equivalent of wanting the fire department to come rescue someone in a burning building who was fully capable of walking out themselves. She should have just logged off, that was the appropriate answer. It's always the appropriate answer when threatened.

The first time, or few times, someone harasses you that way in SL it CAN be upsetting. The adrenaline response kicks in and it FEELS real. Also, people do value reputations in Second Life, so to be defamed in a group or public setting can be distressing.

Report what happened to the group owners. Report in Help/Abuse Report as well. Mute, ban, do what you can.

And then unfortunately there isn't a whole lot more to do...kind of like real life harassment, authorities can't do much until they act out again.

(As for "just log off" it's sensible advice, but, the two may have been enjoying something in SL at the time and didn't want the attacker to have that type of control over their SL. Kind of like when someone harasses/stalks in RL people say "don't change your plans then the terrorists win." I'm being a bit exaggerated to try and find some levity here but, there can be reasons people don't want to be chased off their plans or land.)

The Treasure of today would do exactly that, if that was happening to me, something, anything at all really, that I didn't like and had no control over. But in my new days, clueless, I was 'attacked' at A-Lady, up in the changing room there, no one else was around except the big griefer that showed up and jumped on me. Don't ask me how he jumped on me, I still can't figure it out, but he was naked and humping away, and a huge avi. The rl me was scared to death, but did it occur to me to log off? It did not. As if it were rl, I was just frozen, paralyzed. Finally occurred to me to tp, to a safe place i knew, and then was afraid and wondered if, since he'd seemed attached to me, if I'd somehow brought him with me through the tp. Strange how the mind works in what seem to be extreme circumstances. I didn't know if it was possible or not to bring someone with you through a tp. Now there are so many things I'd do if that happened, morphing into a dragon for fun comes to mind, tp'ing off immediately, or logging off with no drama, but in those early days, good grief, seemed so real.

I agree - when SL is strange and new one doesn't even know what's going on and the fight or flight response means the body and brain thinks it IS real. Since there isn't any known response procedure, (perhaps can't literally run), it seems to go on and on while the person is frozen, not knowing what to do.

There's a reason griefers often single out newbies.

Yep I agree as well. I think some people forget what it is like to be a noob and aren't particularly empathetic to how disconcerting it can be when you've been around the block for a while. I've seen quite a few people become very alarmed at various scams and griefing incidents they've encountered and required quite a bit of talking down and reassurance. Although I've never been a "gamer" prior to SL and would have handled this incident differently, for some people the immersive qualities that we all enjoy in SL can also be alarming when they first encounter a griefing incident.

Then he would know a stranger saying something or using some script to make trouble is not really an emergency.
As said before words can and do hurt but if by someone who does not know you they have less force. If you cant brush it if if its verbal then TP out or log out if they are pushing sit on a ball or if you can build a box and sit on it you cant be pushed then

But it isn't just SL where this happens, modern times have seen a murder over game goods and a suicide over social networking bullying. These things are only going to get worse as we move deeper and deeper into a future where RL and online become less and less separated. People at risk who are unable to find the dividing line between the two are destined for more problems as the digital world blurs into the real one. There are some really significant challenges we are going to go through over the next 20 years while social technology evolves. Kids today who are posting photos and sexting are going to find that stuff surfacing later on when they are building careers, raising a family or running for public office and it will be ugly.

There have been a whole lot of legal debates over the Megan Meier that boil down to the fact that what Lori Drew did was despicable, especially given that she was an adult, but not illegal and it probably won't ever be. I've seen a whole lot of legal opinion that suggests that it wasn't Lori Drew's fault that her target had low self-esteem and was at risk, these same people also opine that it also wasn't Lori Drew's fault that Megan was too immature to separate internet fact from fiction. I don't want to get into the ramifications of this, but this is the far extreme of the topic at hand. Online environments can be immersive, even something as innocuous as MySpace, but in the end it is up to people to take everything with a huge grain of salt because half of it is crap in the first place. Real life is not the same as online life and anyone who finds it hard to distinguish between the two is greatly at risk. A little griefing and harassment in SL is nothing compared to what waits out there in the anonymity of intertubes.

I can stand in a parking lot or a public street and call someone all sorts of names and tell them they are ugly and fat and all sorts of other obnoxious things. They have only a few choices - stay there and ignore it, stay there and attempt some sort of come-back or to defuse it all, or leave.

SL/RL -- it that way, there is little difference. Even as a noob, I guess I always maintained enough of my RL self to know how to click the X and to know that "absolutely nothing" in SL can hurt me if I don't let it. It is rather similar to the RL rule that "words in RL can only hurt me if I let them".

Sorry, I've pretty much lost all sympathy for folks that always want someone else to fix things for them and always want the world to be peachy and cheery. People need to start taking responsibility, not only for their own actions, but for their own emotions as well.

No one can harass you on the internet unless you let them. Ignore,mute,log off... the tools are there,use them.

It won't be long til they are the same - look at M's new year goals. More RL in SL.

Lil, all that is good on paper but not everyone has as thick a skin or as much life experience or street-smarts. Every person is wired differently and has different past experiences, too. Everyone isn't as at ease in virtual worlds or the real world for that matter, as others might be. And not all the pep talking or boot camps in the world will change that for some.

Doesn't it fall on all of us to try to be kind?

Amen and ditto.