Another newbie scam?

We all know how newbies, not knowing how SL works, can be a potential target for scammers and people who want to do something less than honest in SL.

Well, a friend of mine wanted to start SL last night and I was looking over her shoulder as she created her Avie, and went through the tutorials on Orientation Island.

Except that there was newbie there, offering friendship and a LM about every 2 minutes to her. She was confused and didn't know what to do with it. Since OI is closed to established resis, I couldn't take my avi there to check it out, so instead went to look at the landmark destination.

Couldn't quite work it out - a bunch of people hanging around, not saying anything. Couldn't see any obvious scam or anything. Then I got offered membership is a group which I declined, but that at least gave me a name. I saw him, walked over to him, and said that I had been watching OI and was wondering why they were so aggressively passing out LM and friendship invitations in a place that was reserved for newbies.

I got an eject and ban, without a word.

I IMed the person and asked them what was going on, but no reply.

Does this seem wrong to anyone else? I mean they COULD be offering a service for newbies, of course, but why the presence on OI and not on Help Island? And why the unfriendly eject and ban?

OI should be closed to established residents, unless you are an official LL mentor. i'm surprised that "they" could get in there, but you couldn't. they must have made an alt who never left the island so they could stick around.

AR it.

yup make an alt that stays there and drop the LM on his profile then it's all set

*bump*

They'd probably stay clear of doing anything when there's a mentor around and newbies wouldn't know what to do so definitely do AR since you found one out .

that should be completely discouraged if they want potential paying members to not be tainted in their first few minutes. if i went to a new game and had to deal with that, i would just leave and never go back.

I often see new resident on the OIs wearing group tags that are nothing more then advertisement. Many are sex related groups and the newbie has no idea how to remove or leave the group. I have a newbie avi that I will sometimes wear while at the OIs and I was surprised at the number of alts that are created just to hang at the OIs targeting new residents with this type of crap. Of course you were ejected and banned because you confronted this person and that probably intimidated him. All we can do is ask new residents about the group tag they are wearing and explain to them how to leave a group if they don’t want to remain a member. And it’s a nice opening to say hello and offer additional assistance if you’re so inclined.

I was just wondering if it would cause problems to disable giving/receiving inventory while on OI.

Disabling giving inventory while on OI would just mean they'd have an extra alt not on OI to drop things on the newbie.
Disabling receiving inventory (could be viewerside by automatically declining any offered inventory) while on OI would leave them without an obvious way to get off (clicking the "Exit OI" sign hands out a landmark to a random HI) and might impact some mentors who like to play "dress up the newbie" .
It's also likely they'd just spam them with a SLURL in IM in either case as well so the problem just shifts.

Other than taking action when reported, I'm not really sure what they could do about it .

how does someone who is not a Linden have eject/ban powers on OI?

I believe only Lindens do have that power.
If you’re referring to Alucard’s incident, I think they were off the OI when this happened.

AR the dude. A screenshot of the person in question would be helpful I suppose, but chat logs would be even better.

I’m not sure what ARing would do really. You can pretty much eject anyone from your property for any reason. I suggest they brush it off and move on. There will be bigger problems ahead. One shoe and hair in the ass extraction and this will all be forgotten.

AR for soliciting on OI.

It's definitely a big problem on OI.

I stopped doing any mentoring there for that reason.... they don't care if there's a mentor around or not.....and as mentors we don't have the power to eject or otherwise reprimand these scammers. Some try to....but usually the scammer just gat nasty and their behavior becomes worse. OI has got out of control with that kind of crap......that and people just going there to harass new people. It's insane.

When I do go to OI I stay out of the drop zone and try to work further down the path....I feel sooo bad for people trying to start in SL with that kind or distraction and garbage going on all around them. But...mentors are not law enforcement....we're just people who have been accepted as official help volunteers. Sadly, even some of the folks that become mentors have been known to do some spamming.... It's not the norm, but it happens. *sigh* I hope some day they work out a better system of entry for new people, as it stands now, OI is a shit fight.

Hopefully get the solicitor kicked off Orientation Island.

ADDITION: oh you're confused about who we're saying to AR. Yeah, ARing the dude who ejected Alucard is pointless; we're talking about ARing the fake newbie on OI.

If anyone gets word of these scam operators, er, operating, please post it to the Forum Cartel group, or the Help People! group, or any similar group of which you are a member, and which contains Mentors.

If the Mentors get word in time, we can go to the OI, take names, and AR.

Is Orientation Island closed to established residents? It's in my Library landmarks and I go there from time to time. Although there are lots of oldbies there, when I go there I see a steady stream of brand-new newbies arriving too, and also SL mentors. Unless there is some sort of newbie / mentor roleplaying game going on, I assume this is the 'real' Orientation Island!

Personally I would recommend to LL a special "Report Spam" button that's big and visible on the display as long as the person is on OI. That button just immediately forwards all chat and IMs that the person has received in the last minute to a nearby Linden, who can then do a quick review of the forwarded logs to verify that there actually is a spammer and then eject the dude. By having this button easily visible newbies will be able to use it, but once off OI the normal AR menu item is fine so the obvious button is no longer needed.

For this scheme to work would require two changes that seem reasonable to me but I guess I'm not sure: 1) always having a Linden posted at Orientation Island to police it, and 2) an adjustment to the TOS that would make all communication on OI fair game to share with anyone (ie. privacy protection only applies once you've left OI.)

Is this idea worth a JIRA?

I think you are referring to OI Public. That is accesable, but there are a bunch of OIs that aren't accesable once you leave.

yeah that…
/is easily confused

Yep if possible certainly AR anyone soliciting or harassing a new resident on the OIs.
I do it and have even walked newbies through the process of filing ARs so they can do it.

This is only one more reason that LL should require us to connect all alts with our main accounts, like WoW does, and bring back the 5 alt limit. I know that there would still be those dedicated few who create new email accounts, etc just to spam on OI, but if there were SOME limits and SOME controls SOMEwhere, the fake newbie syndrome would decrease.

LL also really does need to assign mentors to specific areas and give them ban/eject powers for those areas only.

This reminds me of a newbie I met when I was pretty green myself she was upset she had a obvious BDSM club tag over her head and I had to show her how to leave the group. The group invite and charter looked like a newbie help group though.

The only way to police this would be to create alts that were always on the various OIs and to AR anybody who has created an alt just for this purpose.

Unless LL would do something about it more directly....

That is so true. I wholeheartedly agree. Is there any police-ing there, other than just mentors offering to help. Maybe they need some big bad security guards.

Sounds to me like a traffic gaming scheme. Make sure that the first place newbies go when they leave OI is your land. Since they're new, they don't know so much how to travel, so many will stick around a while, raising your traffic score. And when they finally leave...well, there's always more newbies on OI. No need for bots or multiple clients. The newbies are your bots. No need to pay them for camping, either.

A little clever, I suppose.

But cheating is cheating is cheating.

Would be nice if after X hours/days an avatar was kicked off OI.