How to report/mute a grief object that IMs you?

My tenants have been reporting receiving obnoxious object IMs today, and it appears that instead of rezzing grief objects on land (most of my islands are no-build and almost all are autoreturn) they're scanning for avatars in the region using an attachment and then IMming the avatars, probably from a different sim. The object has a crazy name that contains special characters, but in the SL font looks like just a bunch of bars: "III||IIl|||||||||||||" (post it into Notepad and you'll see the real characters.)

The Abuse Report UI requires that you specify an avatar or select an object that's harrassing you. But all we have is this nonsense name that cannot be pasted into the Abuse Report thinger.

Residents also say they cannot copy/paste the object name into View > Mute List, although I haven't confirmed that personally. What's the proper procedure for dealing with this?

Here's the text of the spam (I've edited the text to remove someone's name because he's a real resident):

III||IIl|||||||||||||: HELLO MY NAME IS <name removed> AND I'M 16 YEARS OLD, NICE TO MEET YOU HELLO MY NAME IS <name removed> AND I'M 16 YEARS OLD, NICE TO MEET YOU HELLO MY NAME IS <name removed> AND I'M 16 YEARS OLD, NICE TO MEET YOU HELLO MY NAME IS <name removed> AND I'M 16 YEARS OLD, NICE TO MEET YOU HELLO MY NAME IS <name removed> AND I'M 16 YEARS OLD, NICE TO MEET YOU HELLO MY NAME IS <name removed> AND I'M 16 YEARS OLD, NICE TO MEET YOU HELLO MY NAME IS <name removed> AND I'M 16 YEARS OLD, NICE TO MEET YOU HELLO MY NAME IS <name removed> AND I'M 16 YEARS OLD, NICE TO MEET YOU HELLO MY NAME IS <name removed> AND I'M 16 YEARS OLD, NICE TO MEET YOU HELLO MY NAME IS <name removed> AND I'M 16 YEARS OLD, NICE TO MEET YOU HELLO MY NAME IS <name removed> AND I'M 16 YEARS OLD, NICE TO MEET YOU HELLO MY NAME IS <name removed> AND I'M 16 YEARS OLD, NICE TO MEET YOU HELLO MY NAME IS <name removed> AND I'M 16 YEARS OLD, NICE TO MEET YOU HELLO MY NAME IS <name removed> AND I'M

If it's a person, I would check IM logs on my computer, sort by creation date, identify the name that you don't know, mute, and then do a manual abuse report on them and send them the log of what you saw.

I think that the quickest thing you can do is make sure IMs are sent to email, and then log off. The next time it sends an IM, you should get the name of the object in your email and its owner.

Someone just told me about the Dale Glass viewer that has IM tracing capabilities: http://sl.daleglass.net/

There's also a Jira proposing that the client give more info about object IMs: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2388

Plz provide a slurl and someone will check it out? (:
I sent you a message in-world.

If you go to Search > Places you can look up Desperation West and Desperation North. Residents in the SE corner of both islands reported the problem. Same object, same message.

Update: I was writing up instructions on how to mute the grief object by name when I discovered that the 'mute object by name' dialog does not allow pasting! The problem is, the object's name looks just like '||||||||' in SL, but it actually is a combination of different characters, some of them special.

Talking to concierge chat now...

If you can't find the name of the offender, you can always AR Governor Linden and then give the known information in the comments.

Hm...

Governor Linden does not appear in the AR people chooser. (I tried.) I talked to concierge about this and they said the "AR a Linden" routine doesn't work anyway (perhaps they just automatically ignore any AR filed against a Linden).

They said the best way to deal with this stuff for now is to just contact them directly (if you're concierge). And it's only because the object hasn't been found and can't be muted due to the no-paste bug. (Otherwise they'd just tell you to file an AR.) Also, if you have Estate Managers, they are allowed to call the Linden support phone numbers for emergencies- they just can't (apparently) use the live chat facility.

Two Lindens have come out to my islands to investigate but no luck yet. Sindy's discovery sure is interesting though.

In similar incident, we found that muting the object's owner worked to stop the spam.

Cool. Why not AR the object's owner too?

Because the owner isn't known?

A good reason for not ARing the owner all right, but in this case it was the object's name that was reported by the OP as unknown, or rather, unreportable. Trying to remember a case where an object didn't have an owner identified. Does it ever happen?

An object doesn't even have to be in the same sim as you to IM you. This is why griefers are liking this tactic more and more.

In the case of this thread, I don't think Wildefire found the object. If **two** Lindens also showed up, I'm betting it wasn't easy to find.

Well drats!


I think the issue is that they haven't actually found the offending object itself, but can only see it's supposed name through IM.

Well, owing to the fact it IMs everyone that TPs into the sim, i think it hast to be in the sim somewhere. But, it could be flying around in circles for all anyone knows. I just know it was rather annoying when I visited.

Search turns up an actual Blackpat Hallard whose profile does not suggest either a griefer or a 16-yr-old. Looks like he has an enemy, and an interest in getting involved in the case, since the object is practically inviting a ban on his account. One way or another, the Lindens do need to get cracking on this one. Today, the OP; tomorrow, thee and me.

Yep, still hasn't been found... but also hasn't happened since around this time yesterday. *fingers crossed*

Yeah, you know I didn't even think to check if that was a real resident before posting here- because whoever it was, I was sure he wasn't the real culprit. I'm going to edit his name out of my OP. I IMmed the guy yesterday, but if this griefer has been as prolific as I'm expecting, he's probably not checking his IMs right now.

I missed the part where she said it was scanning for victims.

I had a similar problem a couple weeks ago but I was the only one in a crowded area getting hit. I figured it was working off some database of uuids or some such and assumed Wildfire's was doing the same thing.

It was late last night and we were very tired... If the object is still there when I login this weekend I will DEFINITELY submit an Abuse Report.

If his IMs are capped, or he has to ignore them, you could still send a notecard...

My guess? He's afraid of SL now. Worth a shot though.

Here is another part of the puzzle. There are "buried" avatars in several sims that spam stuff like that. They are actualy about 4m under the ground. See threadSpooky Stuff