ToS violation inquiry

That's too easy.......let's clog the system instead.

"I ARed 3 spammers this whole year. Oh noes! I clogged the system!"

--Hugsy

just think if we can get rid of the spammers that would be less notecards and landmarks out there and less load on the asset servers!!

get rid of the spammers

And your recommendation is that everyone else do the same.........three times a year.

I believe that would "clog" the system.....quite severely in fact.

I suspect there's more to it than righteous concern for the tasking level of the poor down-trodden Linden liasons.

--Hugsy

It's more in line with being able to get action on a really important ARable offense........such as stalking, griefing, etc. Because you might be annoyed by s notecard that you can reject and mute the originator, even ban that person without getting LL involved......that is the point. AR things that you cannot take care of without intervention by "authorities".........take care of the rest with the tools you have at your disposal.

Pretty simple concept if you ask me.

the same could be said for greifers...just mute them and ban them why bother LL with them

and stalkers how can they stalk you if you mute and ban them?

Muting (and etc..) takes care of a single spammer, not all of them. Ridding the grid of spam is not something a single resident can do; it requires intervention by the authorities.


--Hugsy

Disposable accounts for the griefers...........a simple mute/ban does not work for that purpose. Someone dropping an annoying notecard on you is not likely to toss out a perfectly good account for you muting/banning him (or her). Griefers are another story. I'm sure you know that though.

And a stalker can stalk you as long as they know your SL name..........even though muted and banned. And the new "disposable" account could be used there too.

Different offences and you know it. Petty AR's are just as bad (even worse) than the offence you are ARing.

but look at this ...clubs come and go constantly new clubs pop up daily and often hire newbs to do this notecard and landmark spamming then after a week or two of the newb getting into trouble at places for doing that they hire a new one etc etc etc now think of how many clubs/malls/sims/groups are doing that it does add up to alot

this week alone i have been handed 5 notecards to malls 3 or 4 notecards and landmarks to clubs none of which i was in or near i was out playing slingo or shopping or dancing and got them plus everyone that was in the area got them also that DOES add up to alot and to me is griefing they are doing something that interrupts my game play which is against the tos

Geeze.........in the over two years I've been in SL I haven't recieved that many unsolicited notecards (in total). Even the suave guys with a nice hit line to give me.

Me thinks you are grossly exaggeratiing the situation.......or you hang out in some really strange places.

If so, she ain't the only one.

--Hugsy

I agree. I can't imagine where people are hanging out to get hit by spam like this. Either way, still doesn't sound like a tragedy to me and again I think it's ridiculous to waste ones time and the lindens on this kind of crap.

In life, one has to choose ones battles. To some this must be the battle they have to choose. As for me, I'll choose more wisely. To each their own, I guess, but I hope to never see these same individuals complain about Linden response time.

Seems like many of your haven't got hit by the auto notecard/landmark givers that spamers wear. I hang out at a 'club' that gets hit by spammers about once or twice a day. They simply tp in spam everyone in 96 m with a notecard and tp out before you can ban them. Now do i ban them? yes. Do I ar them? no but not becasue it isn't arable but because we have never had a linden to come help our club. Even once had a linden return large portions of it for 'having excesivly large mega prims' or something when we weren't hanging over anyones boundries. Spamers and money stealers use the same tactic I have seen. Just hit a place with alot of green dots and newbies. Spam everyone in there with there notecard/landmark/money stealer and get out of there before anyone can react and if they want to come agian they willl just use an alt.

- To AR or not: This would be one place where a little Linden input would come in mighty handy. If there's a huge AR backlog and the system just can't keep up, then we'd probably all agree that the right thing for residents to do is to curtail ARing lesser offenses till the Lindens got the system equipped for the load--as long as such restraint didn't skew the statistics, confusing the Lindens into thinking they had enough capacity.

It occurs to me that it might be handy to have a "for the record" category of ARs, where the submitter says that they don't expect a response to the specific incident, but that the offense should be noted in future if a pattern develops. (I know such patterns are supposed to be part of AR prioritization--hence the importance of getting multiple folks involved in ARing something serious. But it might be a help if we could kind of "pre-triage" submissions we know to be more informative than actionable.)

- Auto notecard givers: As spam increases (and it has, in my experience), the venerable old auto-notecard giver script needs some updating. Some have suggested, and I think it's a very good suggestion, that instead shopkeepers have an object issue an IM greeting to new visitors, directing them to a "customer service kiosk" (which might be the same prim that gives the greeting) which the visitor can touch for a landmark, notecard, enroll for update notifications, request a group invitation, etc. If there aren't already products that do this for merchants, it would be a fairly easy script.

- Clubs soliciting n00bs: Umm... why? I mean, it's nice to be welcoming and all, but for a club to go out of its way to pack the house specifically with n00bs seems... futile. I'm not sure how much fun it can be for the n00bs (surrounded by their fellows, all asking each other how to make L$s), and I'm really doubtful it's good for the club ("Wow! What a great DJ! Have my precious L$3 I was saving-up for a skin!". I mean, I suppose for the next week or so while traffic still counts for something in some Search categories, it might make some sense--not much point in using camperbots at this late date--but doesn't seem like a good business practice going forward.

06-20-2007, 02:54 PM, Torley Linden:

"Sending mass unsolicited teleports is considered spam, yes. Similar to sending mass IMs asking people to visit a place, notecard-spamming, landmark-spamming, etc. Please do abuse report who's doing this; if there's a cluster (meaning many different Residents report them for the same violation of our Community Standards — http://secondlife.com/corporate/cs.php ), then our InWorld Experience Team can identify them faster and cease their spamminess. "

Src: /327/2a/191395/2.html#post1558009

11-25-2006, 07:08 PM, Robin Linden:

"If you can locate the object, then you can file an abuse report against the owner for violating the rules regarding spam."

Src: /139/b4/150963/1.html#post1343868

11-16-2006, 03:59 PM, Torley Linden:

"Hello Kitty, and sorry to hear of the unpleasant experiences. From what you're telling me, yes, this does sound like what we'd consider spam. Unsolicited mass advertising is NOT allowed, see our Community Standards, #6. If you're persistently bothered, you can use Help menu > Report Abuse with the pertinent details, including copy of the spam, so it can be investigated."

Src: /139/e8/148757/1.html#post1336946

04-28-2006, 09:53 PM, Torley Linden:

"Apple, this sounds also like another word which just happens to rhyme with "scam", and that word is "spam". Which is, yes, against our Community Standards and not allowed in Second Life.

You've done the right thing in sending an abuse report."

Src: /139/5c/103065/1.html#post1009138

04-12-2006, 08:07 PM, Torley Linden:

"Yes, spam is against the Terms of Service. Glad you asked.

See section 5.1.(vii), which says (I've abbreviated this):

[snip]

You can send in an abuse report from the HELP menu to have it investigated."

Src: /139/e3/99911/1.html#post985601

I'm sure there's more, but I'm stopping here.

As anyone can plainly see, spam has been an on-going problem in SL and the Linden's consistently tell us to AR it.



Spam is unsolicited. I wouldn't call this entirely unsolicited since you had to TP there to get it (as opposed to getting something entire random concerning something unrelated to what you're currently doing). It's more akin to going to a web site and throwing a pop-up at you. Annoying? maybe. Spam? I don't think.

--Hugsy

At this point we're debating in circles.

There's a camp who strongly believes that Abuse Reports are overused, and that just because something is a TOS violation doesn't neccesarily mean that you should report it.

There's also another camp (which I'm probably a part of), that strongly believes that the mere threat of Abuse Reports have a deterrant effect, regardless of whether they're actually filed.

My concern is that if we say openly that people shouldn't file abuse reports on spam, that spammers will get the message loud and clear that the worst they have to worry about is a land ban.

In a sense, we're debating which is worse: the extra load of abuse reports on Linden vs. an extra load of spam. Both are 'potential' things, so its kinda hard for either side to make a good logical argument.

Lets just agree to disagree & move on, shall we?

Thanks, Hugsy, for the Lindens-on-Record. Sounds like they're equipped to deal with AR volume. (I'd still kinda wish for a way to hint to an imagined automated AR-sorting system that I don't really expect action to be taken on the basis of my one lowly AR; but perhaps that's redundant.)

Apropos the "merchant-dispensed notecards" : Sorry, I quite agree it's not spam, but that wasn't what I was trying to get at in my ever elliptical way. Rather, it's that merchants have to go out of their way now, I think, to be distinct from spam, or they'll get ignored as if they were spamming. So I don't think it's "wrong" for a merchant to automatically give a notecard when a visitor TPs in; I just don't think it's as effective as it may once have been. (I know I just decline all notecard offers without thinking now, whereas I didn't used to do that.) So I'd speculate that being extra polite about it might get more notice and more results--especially if some visitors will opt-in for other means of contact like update notices or group membership.

A newbie at OI who does Replace Outfit by mistake on their new hair and suddenly goes nekkies is breaking the ToS. AR's, IMO anyway, are for people who are abusing things on purpose, not for people who just don't quite get it yet or do things by newbie mistake..

/me stands by her original statement that this might have been rude but is not worthy of an AR.

Can someone tell me - do the various url promotions received in Group Chat - notably newbie prevalent Groups such as MoneyTree Madness and the like, constitute ARable spam? They can certainly be distracting.
As for spam notecards, I can understand the concept but personally have never received enough in my wanderings to consider it anything other than a minor irritation resolved by a simple click on the 'no thanks' button, not even worthy of the effort of muting the individual.
Go with the flow and stay ulcer free

i dont think the stuff in grp chats would count you joined the grp by choice you can always leave the grp to not get the messages

I have definitely seen group chat spam listed in the SL blotter. It would be nice if LL kept more than 25 entries around, so that people could get a better idea of what is and isn't going to cause them potential trouble.

what i dont understand is how that can be reported as spam
you join a grp to find out about lucky trees how can it be spam fo them to then pass out thru im's the information to get to those lucky trees

now i could see being in a club grp and getting spammed with lucky tree info as being spam because that is not what that grp is for

Yes, that part is what will make the difference between solicited and unsolicited. But that is part of the fun for any service's abuse department, they get to sort out the nonsense complaints from the reasonable ones.

If anything is cluttering up the AR system it'll be the "personal dispute" ARs (i.e. "zomg! I sat on a camping chair and it didn't pay out!" .

On-topic: for club/store invites I'll AR the owner, not the clueless newbie that was taken advantage of. In most cases it's easy to get the owner to state that it happened with his/her blessing, making it an admission of mass-advertising.