We've been griefed!

My brother and I are fair noobs still - he a little less than me, but we are both still fairly new. We bought ourselves a little plot of mainland and starting building - we have a couple of modest houses, a sweet little koi pond, and an elevated dance floor and sky garden that we'll use to entertain our friends. It's a nice little place and we're enjoying it.

Yesterday we suffered our first griefer attack. A pack of about half a dozen avvies turned up on our land, rezzed a platform in the sky and started raining fireballs down on us. My brother was blasted out of the sim and had to restart.

When the dust had settled we set to damage control. We filed ARs on the objects they left behind and as many of them as we grabbed the names of from our chat log. We realized that we'd made the noob mistake that some of our land settings were unsafe, and we fixed them - now only we can rez stuff on our land or run scripts.

There's still the problem of the platform and other objects the griefers left behind - we can't seem to delete them or eject them from the land. They are clearly there but they do not show up as "objects owned by others" in the land properties. We are paranoid that there are other objects we have not yet found - we've been combing over our land adding up prim totals.

My brother is talking to Linden support this morning but I thought I would tap the collective mind here and see what your recommendations are - are there more precautions we should take? What else should we expect in the aftermath of the attack?

As a possibly-related aside, my front door no longer works - it used to close when touched, and now it appears stuck in an open position. Could that possibly be related to the attack? (Also, I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this, but setting the land so that only owners can run scripts doesn't prevent visitors from using my scripted objects, does it?)

My brother is really shaken - he used to be warm and friendly to strangers wandering into our land, but last night he was snapping at them "Who are you?" because he no longer trusts random residents wandering by. That makes me sad - that lets the griefers win, to import a cliche, and I don't want that to happen. I'd like to put his mind at ease that we have done everything we can.

Thanks for your insights and advice.

Was your land permissions open to everyone?
Make sure the land settings only allow group members to script, build,etc and that push is turned off. If you don't want strangers flying to your sky garden turn that off too but I am not sure what height the restrictions for that are no longer valid.

Sorry to hear that. Again, no push, no build, no object entry, no scripts and autoreturn are your safest bet. If those things are set, you've done as much as you can to stop this from recurring.

There are alway those nuts and losers doing this kiddy games. I always wondered what fun is it to them to cause harm to others. 3 years and i seen almost every possible griefter attack. stupid stupid people....................

Just settle down and do real life for awhile. Stupid people that cause harm are those that have nothing better to do in their lives then do that kind of childish things...

Regarding the platform that "isn't" there. This could be a ghost prim that never got cleared by the server for some reason (maybe, I'm not sure.) You can request a region restart and explain that you've got ghost prims. This will at least force the server to figure out what's really there and what's not.

Regarding the door: It's possible that your script just needs resetting. Open the contents of the door, open the script, and choose "reset." This could have absolutely nothing to do with the griefing; it just happens some times. If I were you (which I'm not, ) I'd leave scripting on. I've never really had major problems with scripts. Of course everyone gets griefed now and then, but it's nothing worth tearing your hair out. Just think of it like someone cutting you off in traffic. It sucks and it happens, but it's over quickly.

Regarding your brother: Tell him to relax, and that he's there to PLAY, not freak out. By all means welcome people to your land, if you like. There's not enough kindness in the world.
Have fun out there!

Ban lines, know them, use them, love them.

Yeah I forgot to mention if you have permissions on your land off for the public around i.e no build, no script,etc. the worse they can do is bombard you in instant message object spam just ignore and discard, don't except.
It is annoying but the worse they can do is just behave like jerks.

The platform is a mega-prim whose centre is not on your property, so you will not be able to delete it. It seems to be centered on some small parcels in the middle of you and your neighbours which have build permissions set.

The fact it's a mega prim overhanging several parcels means that Support should shift it.

By the way... your 'pasture' still has object entry set...

There is always more you can do.

However, as has been discussed many times, the more you hole up, and cut yourself off from SL in the process, "the more the griefer's win".

For homes, I always reccomend leaving Build on, but placing a 5 minute auto-return on the land. This is to be amiable to friends who would like to show off things, or for passing newbies to rez vehicles, or jsut bought packages.

The main thing to remember about griefers is that they're stupid. Five minutes after they've bombed you, they were laughing and patting each other on the back so hard....and they have no idea where they were. They're random because they have no purpose (sort of like worms in dogs).

The best way for you and your brother to deal with things like this is to deal with them as they come. The people you see are rarely the ones to grief,so there's no need to "look out" for potential griefers.

AR the people when events like this happen. Mute them if needed (ie, they're IMing you constantly), and land ban them if they are around that long.

Then enjoy SL. Have fun. Be freindly to everyone. This will tick off the griefers more than anything. Ignoring the attention whores hurts them worse than any SL weapon for defense ever could.

~Jessy

A good setting to use is under Objects: Autoreturn 1. That means any prims belonging to others will be returned. The only prims that won't will be those that are large enough to have their center on a neighboring property or (rarely) ones that are scripted as temp rezzers (if you go to View/Hightlight Transparent you will see an invisible object that keeps re-rezzing the prim, delete that and you will be okay...or Autoreturn should take care of it too).

A very large prim or one that won't go away needs to be looked at by a Linden. Go to the support page of the website and put in a support ticket. Hopefully, eventually, someone will come and take a look at it.

I understand how you feel, after my first griefing experience, I was quite shaken too...but it does get better and you learn to take it in stride.

Hi, and 1st of all I'm sorry that you have met some of the less useful residents of SL.
Next, Welcome to SL I truly hope you and your brother are able to find as much joy and magic during your time here as I have.

Now, I unlike pretty much everybody else here do not advocate closing your land in any way other than no push. Ban lines are a joke, they stop nothing and just ruin the view for all your neighbors. No build, just stops people from rezzing on your land, it does not stop particles in any way. so all a griefer has to do is rezz a particle generator off your land and you will still be flooded by whatever they have it send ( I have seen everything from Kermit the frog to things it makes me shiver to think about)
My point is by closing your land, and stopping friends from being able to rezz etc you are letting them win. Ignore them, what they want is attention, do not give it to um just go on with your fun and enjoyment, welcome new people until they prove to be not worthy. then, freeze them, it is more fun than ejecting for me. If someone gets nasty on my land, I freeze them and keep them frozen not talkin to them at all until they get bored and log off then I add them to the ban list.

In any population you have asshats who enjoy trying to ruin others fun. don't give them the satisfaction.

Just my 2 cents worth, have a wonderful Second Life

PS> I have found that the JIRA reports on objects in teh Sim are responded to pretty quickly.

I haven't had to make a group in a long time so maybe someone with more recent experience can chime in with the specifics. But I believe awhile back LL changed groups so you can have a group of only 2 people (it used to be 3). If that is true then you can make a group for yourself and your brother. Set your land to group. In the land settings you can set various ones to group only. As long as you are wearing your "family" group tag you will be able to do whatever you wish but others will not be able to rez objects or use scripts or whatever you have denied them in the about land. this also facilitates the autoreturn as it will only return objects not set to group.

Thanks, everyone, for your comments. You have pretty much confirmed my thoughts about what we can and should do.

Special thanks to Ee Maculate and others who visited the land to check it out. My brother and I already formed a group (along with one other member of our family) and all of our plots are deeded to the group; since the attack we've been working on getting all the permissions set properly so that only we can rez things. I haven't got all the settings right yet - I'm not in world now and won't be until tonight (darn first life real job grumble grumble) but I will fix them all then, including setting the autoreturns, &c.

I do not know much about megaprims but it makes sense that that is what the object griefer's object is, and that it is centered on neighboring land - that explains why we can't get rid of it. I hope LL can help us with that.

I do not want to put up ban lines (we have banned the griefing avies but don't expect that to do much). I *like* having unexpected visitors, it's a fun way to meet people. Most people are polite when they find they have wandered into someone's home, and are delighted when they find that we are welcoming and friendly. Also we have a neighbor with ban lines and I hate them; they are ugly and break the immersive illusion of the SL landscape.

I am hopeful that it won't happen again soon, that we just got unlucky; someone noticed that we had not restricted rezzing and such and took advantage of it.

The biggest thing to remember is that all griefers cause is temporary annoyance. Don't panic, don't go anti social, don't curl up in the fetal position and hide. The word griefer seems to strike more terror into people than the acts themselves, they're nothing but a bunch of juvenile punks. Give them as little attention as possible. Consider all the tools and options dicussed already, and use whichever ones you feel necessary and are comfortable with.

Also, a nice and entertaining tool is the 'freeze' option that all landowners get. You right click the avatar that is on your land and select 'freeze' from the pie menu. They can't chat locally and they can't move, so you have yourself one nice dress-up doll.

It doesn't last long, unfortunately, but if you have a group and another in the group has the power to freeze griefers.. you can get a pretty decent number of prim based items 'on' the avatar for that wonderful embarrassing picture.

A word of warning - if you do set your land to a group for yourself and your brother, and you set auto-return, there is a risk that all your existing items will be returned - that happened to me!

Just to clarify that- DO send a support ticket via the support system; please do NOT open a JIRA issue for something like this. JIRA is to report BUGS only.


I yesterday had a nekkid noob in my alt's house....door was locked but he went to sit on the sofa inside anyway. He profusely apologised when I turned up and said hello and wanted to leave, but because the door was locked...he couldn't.

And make sure that when you do build, that you have your group title on. When I went to set up the group and land.. I made sure I went around the build and set every little prim to the group.. and then turned on the auto-return. Still have 5 things come back to me. Ah, well.

In the long run, it's worth it, though. Gives you both power over the shared land and allows you a percentage more than just the contributed tier.

Yes, it happens, but would you rather your house be on fire for 9-10 hours while you are away at work, if for some reason, no object entry failed?

Okay, I was a little worried about this. So before I turn on auto-return I should make sure every object is set to the same group that I've deeded the land to, right? If I don't, will it all end up in my lost-and-found, even though it belongs to me and I belong to the group?

Yes. And your brother too.

Okay, thank you.

/me will have a busy evening in-world tonight - lots of chores to do.

We went prim hunting yesterday-there were *still* some prims that weren't set to group and they were...buried within other prims....the fun!

Hear, Hear!!!

Hmm Freeze option has been useless for entertainment the 30 seconds it works for is just enough to slow them for you to take a breath, then you need to catch the buggers as they dodge and weave before you can click them again for freeze or eject/ban.

I just created a Jira to extend freeze time to 5 minutes if anyone would like to vote on it. Why should griefers get all the fun?

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3914