Second Life Harrassment of Newbs and Others

I just signed up, but haven't entered the game yet because I think I should research a little first. What in your experience are some of the most common things people can do to harass someone who's new?

Caging would be one example and another would be the situation where someone uses a "heart?" and if you respond it begins sex (I believe something like this led to the well known "rape" case in the news a while back).

I also heard something about saying "Knock Knock" and if you reply "Who's there" that gives them access to your computer.

There was also something about "zombies" where if you accept an item from someone it might give them control over your avatar. I seem to remember this also being a possible cause of the "rape" case.

Any tips?

Don't accept objects from people out of the blue, even then only do so once you feel like trusting them.

Pay attention to pop ups, you are asked permission to be animated by objects or for them to access your lindens.

"Don't take candy from strangers." Is the best advice I can imagine telling you. Really, some nice people can and will give you a good wardrobe makeover. Others will give you "nice pants" and you'll end up on the tail end of a "PWNED" bull and start gyrating away. (>_<

Also, remember to wear your thick skin. SL is anonymous and offers a large audience. (^_^)

Never give anything permission to debit you or animate your avatar unless you're sure of what it is. (=_=)

And, don't believe roles of authority. If someone's wearing a tag over their name that says "SL Police", "Security", or anything of the sort... It doesn't really mean a thing. At best, they're local security for the club or sim you're in and are not REAL authorities for SL. The only true authorities are people with the surname of "Linden" since they are employees of Linden Lab. (^_^)

Knock knock............

Just use a little common sense, don't click on anything asking you a Yes or No question without understanding it, and if clicking on a poseball causes your avatar to do something you don't like, just stand up, TP away or log off if necessary. And stop believing what you read on the Internets.

*Hopes the whole "Rape" nonsense ISN'T going to be dragged out again* oops

There is no rape in Second Life. If you decline to get on a pose ball or grant animation permissions, nothing like that can be done to your av.

Edit: Damn it, day late and a dollar short...

The only rape occurs when land owners get their bill.... .

Take your time in Orientation and once in game, go to NCI. You can find it in search. It has lots of info for new folks as well as being a gathering place for new people. I believe you can set your home landmark there as well until you get a space of your own to call home.

NCI has several locations and multi lingual folks on duty to help. Yes, you will find A holes there but not as many as in some of the public orientation places in my experience.

NCI has a huge collection of freebies to get you started and classes so you can learn to build, communicate and script.

Other than that hold off on friendships until you get to know people and don't click yes on any screens like animate your avatar or take your Lindens.

When I was new, I was really nervous around other people but I came to realize that you are actually quite safe in SL in terms of attacks, etc. You can TP away at any time. If you get caged, just TP away..if you fear being orbited..(which I actually came to enjoy)...just sit on a prim...or better yet, get yourself a Mysti Tool...it has a bit of a learning curve..but it is the one thing I wish I had learned about and bought earlier. It will allow you to fly higher and it has a set of defense tools as well as a landmark holder.

Welcome to Second Life, and if it works for you, be ready for the real change to come more from how you respond to the freedom rather than from any external griefing.

Rape? Seriously? I was unexpectedly molested by a large plant in a science lab once, but I can't really get my head around SL rape.

On topic though,
If someone you don't know offers you something and you're unsure of them, talk to them a bit before clicking Yes or No. If you have a bad feeling, just TP out.
On the whole though, I advise throwing caution to the winds, jumping in with both feet and just have fun.

Welcome to the Forums!Sometimes somebody will welcome you to the Forums. It's all down-hill from there.

So, really, the most important thing is to read pop-up dialogs, and not accept stuff you shouldn't. Probably most importantly at this stage is to *never* accept a pop-up that asks your permission to "take money from you"--that one is something that will actually make your account unusable, because there's (currently) no way to cancel that permission once you've granted it.

The hard part about all this is that, when you're starting out with a newly installed client (or "viewer", you'll get thrown a lot of noisy dialogs that you'll want to just click off your screen because they're telling you something insanely obvious. Try to read through them to make sure they aren't asking you to do something dangerous--the trivial "first timer" ones will only appear the first time you do something.

Be leery of wearing ("attaching" anything anybody gives you, because once you attach something (or sit on something), that thing has more than the usual permissions over your avatar: it can animate it, move it around, etc.

If you get a dialog asking to "animate your avatar", well, whatever is asking will probably animate your avatar. Of course that's a good thing if it's a danceball and you want to dance; not a good thing if the animation is sexual and you're not in the mood.

Caging can happen, but it's only done by residents under about a week old because it's so lame. That pretty much also applies to all "weapons" in SL: if it weren't for residents fresh-off-the-boat from Orientation Island, weapons scripters would starve. Unless it really really bothers you (in which case somebody else will have to suggest "escape" maneuvers), I'd just ignore all this junk--they'll outgrow it soon enough--and sit on some nearby chair or poseball (since it will be sure to have a specific sit target set) and then stand up. (Yes, some poseballs contain sexual animations but not usually in areas one would visit if not looking to engage in such animations.)Unlikely, unless you have something else running on your computer--in which case they'd already have control of it.Just accepting something doesn't give them any control, but attaching (or "wearing" something they've given you *can* grant a bunch of permissions, as mentioned above. On the other hand, accepting everything can lead to a cluttered Inventory, but that's a very different different danger that we all fight every day.

Congratulations on asking for advice before starting.

and one more thing... Don't leave your avatar unattended for too long without sitting on a object. Or better yet, just log off. People have a sick sense of humor here and there are a lot of animations that do not require your consent.

I have seen avatars, that are "away", being air pumped. Don't ask!

JulieAnne

I remember a girl once telling me, in all seriousness, that she was raped in SL.

I laughed.

Hard.

One might even say that I LOLled

Does this make me a bad person?

In B4 'It's-not-a-game Brigade'.


I'm getting that Friday Feeling.

That seems pretty friendly to me!

Honestly, though, you're more likely to get 'decorated' with things like fish and chicken buckets.

Oh! And just to head this one off, a lot of things you acquire will be boxed. In order to get the actual items out, you need to pull the box out of inventory onto the ground and right-click > Open on it. You can then either copy to inventory or copy and wear. Please pick up your box when you're done by right-click > Take if the items are copyable or right-click > More > Delete if they aren't.

You can also wear the box and use the Edit menu to get the items out most of the time, but that's a little more complex to explain...more steps, anyway.

Only if you were the rapist....

There are Trolls, Griefers, Idiots and Kids running loose on the main Grid, last I looked they were running loose in the real world too. In SL however they cannot harm you with out your joining in. My Favorite way to handle Grief is to sit and critique it, usually with an "I've seen much better" and on people demanding sex I just reply with "go ahead.. tell me when to moan"

They need you to be shocked, upset, argumentative and yelling back at them or its no fun.

Aryen,

Go ahead, jump on in.

When you first log in, you'll find yourself in a plaza, with paths going off in four directions.
This is Orientation Island, with tutorials to teach you some very basic skills. Follow the paths, read the signs, touch the exhibits...explore and play around.

If you see someone with the legend "Second Life Mentor" over their heads, they are volunteers there to help you and answer your questions. You can trust any items they send you.

Your progression should be something like this: Orientation Island ---> Help Island (where you can learn to open a boxed item, and pick up some freebies) ---> Welcome Area (which is likely to be crowded and chaotic).

Once you are at the Welcome Area, your Map and Search tools become useful (they do not have full functionality on Orientation and Help Islands). Use them to find interesting places to go.

A few newbie-friendly places: NCI, GQ Start, The Forum Cartel Hangout, almost all of Caledon, Secret Reflections, Venice.

Stay away from sites like Hippiepay that offer to pay you Linden Dollars for filling out online surveys. The survey sites will clog your computer with spyware. Stay away from camping...you can have a lot more fun, and get a lot more L$, by just buying some for a few bucks.

There is really very little that can be done to harm you, although there are some ways that jokes can be played on you (like putting a funny hat on your avatar while you are Away From Keyboard). A simple logout fixes most of those. Sitting on something will foil almost all attacks. Most items that someone gives you are OK.

One thing to watch for: If anyone gives you an item and you get a yellow dropdown box that says "XXX is requesting permission to debit your account", DO NOT PUSH THE ACCEPT button. It will drain your account.

There's lots of other stuff that you'll need to know, but most of it can wait until you're ready to buy land, or spend some serious money on a set of good skins.

Welcome to the Forums, and to Second Life!

We're still here - we've all survived! Log in and enjoy!!!

Not in that particular incident.

Avoid the Linden "welcome" areas. Seek out "The Shelter" or "NCI" which are newb friendly organizations and don't contain the pile of people who live at the welcome areas and annoy others because they are bored.

Going to have to disagree to this one. When I started, I ended up on MoneyIsland, which I set to my home. Back then, camping rates were high and I used it often. I never liked the surveys, as I didn't want to give out my personal information.

The point is, when i need to sort out my inventory, there is nothing wrong with dancing on a pad and making a few Lindens while I'm doing it!

JulieAnne

I'll second pretty much everything that has been suggested in the thread.

DO take your time in Orientation Island and Help Island, make sure you're comfortable with moving around and using the client before you get into the real world. The only people allowed here are new residents like yourself, also Mentors and Lindens, so you won't be disturbed by trolls & griefers in those places.

There are animations that can animate your avatar and some of them are sexual, but they all require you to either sit on a "poseball" or accept a Yes/No request from another user. If at any time you find yourself doing an animation that you don't want to do, then simply standing up, or clicking "Stop All Animations" in the tools menu will quit it. If you don't know the person asking for the animation, and you don't know what the animation is that they're offering, say No. You cannot be raped in SL without it being voluntary on both sides because you always have the freedom to stop the animation, teleport away or log off. Anyone who says otherwise is either roleplaying or deliberately lying.

Being caged is the same. You can either teleport out, or you can pan your camera to the side, click on something else outside of the cage and sit on it. Some griefers just like to push people around, you can avoid being pushed by sitting down on something.

There are some dodgy items in SL but they're few and far between (in the 2 years I've been in-world I've only encountered one such item). Some of them may be keyloggers designed to steal your password to access your account, steal lindens etc. I would be far more worried about items like Hippiepay kiosks and other things that promise free lindens if you sign up to fill in surveys and things like that. Scams in SL usually look just like scams in RL.

I've never heard anything about the Knock Knock joke. I expect that's a hoax. You can't get viruses on your computer by being given items in SL, although some items may open your browser to look at external websites which may be infected. You should have good anti-virus protection if you're on the internet anyway.

Most of the griefing is people just trying to be really annoying. Because there's no way to actually harm people in SL (even in combat zones the worst that can happen is you get teleported home), they just annoy by being rude and offensive. The best response to that sort of thing is to file an Abuse Report (off the Help menu). And mainly ignore them. If they don't get any attention they get bored and go away.

After you've left Orientation Island and Help Island, use Search to find NCI. Also The Shelter. These are both great places for new residents to meet people, get help and advice and freebies. Other good places for freebies include the Free Dove, and Sarah Nerd's. Don't worry too much about getting money at least to begin with - there are a lot of things you can get free.

When I first started SL, I would regularly do camping for a couple of hours or so. This was back in the day when the usual rate was L$3 for 10 minutes, and you could be sure that the other people there camping with you would be real people and some of them would actually talk to you. Nowadays nearly all the camping spots are full of bots (automated avatars, not real people), they pay about L$1 an hour and if you find an empty one it must be broken.

Guys it actually is possible to be assaulted in SL without consent. I was once on a beach with someone and some guy came along and attached himself to my face with his...ummm....private parts. Being new and not great at my camera use, I actually didnt know what was going on, and i couldnt get him off once i figured it out. It was very disturbing since at the time i didnt know what to do or really what was happening. I finally tpd nearby and that released me. While it was virtual, the feelings of being attacked were surprisingly strong and my hands were shaking at the time. Soon after friends explained how to avoid things like this, tp elsewhere, log off etc. But in the moment, it was jarring and disturbing. So while it is not possible to be raped in SL, it is certainly possible to be attacked in a way that leaves one feeling vulnerable and confused which it me is pretty close.

I've been groped a few times - but ultimately the jokes on them 'cos I'm a guy IRL

After all you wouldn't randomly grab a girls private parts in RL so why should SL be any different? At least I would hope that you dont