Alt Detection

Is there a way to see if someone is an alt? And if so, can you tell who's alt they are?

No. You can't detect of account A and account B are alts for the same person. For that matter, LL can't tell, not accurately.

A day old avatar rezzing shouting spongebob cubes all over mainland is probably an alt.....

If you think about it, we're all alts

here's the thing, I just met someone last night who is a supposed rl friend of one of my good sl friends. However, she seems to know a bit too much about me and about other stuff. And she is probing me for answers on how i feel about certain things of the said friend. I was just wondering if there was a way to confirm or disprove my suspicions?

if the glove doesn't fit, you can't acquit.

no wait, the opposite of that sentiment. =/

Also, very young avvies with full, professional looking profiles and an experience level a newb is unlikely to possess are usually alts. But these are rare. You'd rather encounter Spongebob

To answer the OP's question: No, there is no reliable way to determine that. Consider the following: What would be the difference between RL husband & wife playing with one avvie each on the same computer to a single person using two alts? Except for the bag of flesh in front of the monitor everything's exactly the same.

No. Either you trust them, or you don't. There is absolutely no way you can "prove" that those two accounts are alts for the same person, nor is there any way that they can both "prove" to you that they are two separate people. Such proof is 100% impossible, either way.

If it bothers you that much, you had better rethink weather or not you can be comfortable in an environment where this is possible, and what your own basic assumptions are about the people you are dealing with.

It could be your RL friend!
Testing you!
Say nothing, Alts always slip up!

Consider this... Your original friend chooses to "prove" to you that he and the second person are really two people, by flying both of them to meet you in RL, at their expense, and while you watch their RL selves, they each produce a laptop, hook it to the net, and log in as the two respective accounts. Proof Positive? No. The frist friend could just as easily have bribed a stranger to put on a show for you, and given that stranger the password and login info for the alt account. The fact that this person logged in as that account now does not mean it is the same person who did so last night from Phoenix. For that matter, bothg of the people you met at the airport could be local college kids contacted via the Internet and paid to put on this show, while the original friend is actually a 50 year old truck driver from Amsterdam.

On the other side of the coin, the "new girl" might well BE a RL friend of the first friend... someone who has often been at the first friend's home, watching over their shoulder as they play in SL, and the two chatting about the various people your first friend interacts with regularly. Perhaps even during the most intimate and private moments that you have shared with that first friend. Anything you shared with the first friend might have also been seen by another person who was watching the screen at the same time. Or could have been told to that second person by the first, the way girls sometimes share all the gory details of their date with their best friend.

A single person could go to great lengths to make it appear that they are two separate people. For example, setting up a Windows PC and a Mac Laptop side by side, with different IP addresses, and logging on with both systems at once. So even an IP trace wouldn't be able to tell it was one person.

See? You can't prove either case.

Not always...

I recently decided to divulge to friends in another role playing venue that all 14 of the accounts I had there were run by one person. My two most frequently used accounts were among the top 20 posters in that set of forums, in terms of total post count, and very high-profile. I had given the extremely consistent impression there that they were 5 different individuals, with those two main accounts appearing to be a male in his 50's and a female in her 30's. People there had been extremely active with many of my accounts for as long as 7 years. The vast majority of them had no clue that it was really only one person playing those diverse roles. I could easily have kept it up indefinitely. I only told them because I had decided to quit that venue, and it was easier to say goodbye as one individual, rather than opening 14 in-character "Farewell" threads there.

Why not deal with this straightforwardly, instead of trying to be a detective? Let's call your good friend "Goodie", and the new person "Newbie". You could simply tell Newbie that you're uncomfortable with her intrusion into your relationship with Goodie, and politely ignore Newbie from now on. Tell Goodie that Newbie seems very curious about her business, and if Newbie is actually her alt it's really tacky (so please stop), and if Newbie IS Goodie's RL friend, she may want to limit what she shares.

Manners can be tricky in SL, since there is no real analog to alts in RL. But, RL ethics still apply.
.

You may also want to consider that this RL friend of your SL friend may actually be .... yourself! It's possible that you have a split personality that you are completely unaware of. The next time you meet this RL friend try looking down at the task bar of your computer screen and see if there is a SECOND copy of your SL client running in the background!

Good advice, Nika!

Flags wave for a reason- do not fall for it- if u are wrong then so be it- better than looking stupid later- been there, been done to- run dont walk.

FTW!

I would never say anything about a person in SL to another person in SL that I would not say directly to the first person.

Same goes on RL e-mail. Or in RL talking to real people. Maybe the two avatars are really separate people, but what you say to one could easily be passed on to the other.

I was taught in kindergarten not to say anything about a person that I would not want that person to hear. That rule is especially important in SL and with e-mail.

Are we allowed to think behind a person's back?

What happens if they invent a machine that can read our thoughts?

What then eh?

Marybeth has the right idea. Unless your the type of person that is into those sort of games,
saying bad things about people behind their back is never a good practice.
Especially in a world where anyone can be an alt.

Occasionally I may suspect that for whatever reason someone may shop at my store in there
alt. Which is completely fine with me. Different people have alts for different reasons and I respect that. Then there are people who actually use their alts for deceptive reasons which
just sucks in my opinion.

You can choose to be paranoid of alts or not, but IMHO there are far better ways to spend your time.
If you do continue to encounter people who you suspect, you could try a different type of
response. Like waxing on about general alt abuse in SL or try to direct them to some topic
of conversation that is of more substance. Like finding out if they may be interested in your
latest products.

This ^^^



Reguardless of whether it's a seasoned RPer or just someone trying to dig info out of someone, if it involes someone NOT in on the RP, then it becomes exactly the kind of REAL deception the OP suspects may be being pulled on him. As for RP, believability past the line of being deceitful doesn't indicate a better RPer, it fingers someone willing to put believability over all else, including their "friends".

a new continent will be created for thinking avatars...
to access the main continent.. you will need one of those spongebob alts.

First, I did not mean to moralize in the above post about saying things behind someones back. Just to point out the danger, particularly with written, e-mail, or SL communications where the evidence remains.


Given the thoughts that I sometimes have, such a machine would be a serious problem for me.

Of course, I would be the first to want to buy the machine

Mary

Experience is the only alt detector I know of in SL and even then it is not always accurate. Alts, whether used for good or evil, are deceptive by their very nature when used secretly on the people who usually know them by their regular account.

My experience has been mostly negative with alts. Even if they started out innocent, they usually never remained that way. Most cannot handle the power of anonymity and it has been proven to me time and time again.

Errrrr.....

Maybe you can, if you can logging the IP (owning a parcel and using the media url)of your "friend" and then from the "alt" , you can compare the Ips and see if they come from the same ip (dinamic ips broke this way)

Aww, no worries. I was just being silly.