"Pinpointing" an alt?

While I don`t suppose theres a way, I thought I would ask anyhow.

Is there any way for me to find out the alts of an avatar? There is a guy who ive banned from my sim, so he has made alt(s) to pay his visits to my SIM and harrass my customers and solicit his "business" to them.

Infact, here is a recent IM I received about 20 minutes ago from a customer:

"Tattoo artist "__________" has been hanging around your shop, trying to steal customers. Just FYI."

When asked "Did you see him or just received an IM from him" they note that come to think of it, they did not see him in my shop; which makes sense- I banned him. The only conclusion is he has an alt or is getting friends to get names of those shopping in my store.

How do I stop this?

I have filed two ARs against this person so far. one of them I got a response about a month later saying they "took care" of the situation but could not release details of what they did.

I understand I should not really let this type of thing get to me. But this is getting out of hand. The MAIN reason it bothers me is because I am paying tier fees to linden lab, not him. He is basically using my SIM as free advertising grounds to try and run a "business" out of his profile.

He is rude, cocky, and quite frankly- a Thief.

I am really tired of logging in and getting IMs about this fellow. And i would like to put a stop to it before it gets worse (If I got hit with a competing IM everytime I visited a shop, eventually I would stop making visits there). I also suppose he has hit a lot more of my customers with his IMs, but only a few are reporting the instances.

If Linden Lab is not going to take care of this like I asked them to..is there any possible way for me to "pinpoint" which avatar is his hanging around my sim?

If not, does anyone have an idea of what I can do to stop this?

Ive IMd him and asked him to stop. Ive imd him and told him to stop..He obviously has no intentions of stopping. And he is back again, after LL "Took care" of the situation.

BanLink may be able to help, but is still re-active as they have to find the alt, then add him to the list.

I'd file a Support Ticket to see if LL can help with this. They ~can~ track this person by ISP (and by other emans as well). LL ~can~ find out who the person is.

While most griefers are garden varity idiots, there are those that are truely ones that may need RL legal action taken against them. While Harrassment is against the ToS, it is also against the law. Proving Harrassment within a virtual world may be "tricky" in a RL court of law, but I do not think it would be any different than harrassing phone calls.

File a Support Ticket asking for LL legal help in what they can, and will, do. If you would file a RL lawsuite, LL would be required to provide information to the courts. If nothing else, they can provide you with council on how this interacts with the ToS and what LL can do to assist. Sometimes their hands are tied legally.

No matter what, this is prolly not going to be resolved quickly. Try to not let it wear you down and continue to use all legal means, both RL law and within the ToS, and keep sending in reports to LL. Also, advise your employees (if you have any help at your store), and friends to AR this person whenever they see it. (And possibly putting up signs so your customers can) Prepare a short statement to be attached to every AR detailing that you believe this is the same account being used to harrass you and your place of buisness. Be sure to keep a calm, and professional tone in the ARs. It is easy to let emotions take over, and ranting ARs tend to get less attention at LL than well worded, intelligent ones.

You may even try a Live Chat through the Support portal to talk about options and things you can do to help yourself and to help LL gather "proof". However, as this is a fairly narrow field of expertise, I'd advise trying on a weekday, and even then, don't be dissappointed if the Linden contacted jsut doesn't have the knowledge to help.

And if you just need to rant, rave and let it all out to blow off steam, give me an IM in-world. I won't be able to help beyond listening (and possibly offering advice on security measures you can do), but sometimes it's good to just scream your head off and vent to someone.

Good luck
~Jessy

Hi Jessica-


This is what I requested in my first AR. If they could ban every avatar associated with his IP from my sim. ... I guess they didnt.


Good idea, I will write up something and ask everyone who IMs me about this person to include it in a AR report about him... Maybe more AR reports will help.

Unfortunately in my most recent AR I said a lot of colorful things I shouldnt have. But I was extremely upset. I feel as though I am paying for him to upset me, and I dont have the tools to properly get rid of him.

Do you suppose concierge could help with this or do those problems need to be geared toward SIM performance issues? Ive found my dealings with concierge to be handles much better then the support team ever handled any of my problems....alot quicker, too!


Thankyou

Um.

While I feel for you, and your situation, as an alt, I sincerely hope there is absolutely no way for someone to find out who an alts original account is.

Um.

Yeah there probably isnt. But there may be good ideas people can come up with... Not easy ones..but ideas non the less.


.....All Im doing is looking at the time of the IM i got from a customer, and checking those who were on my sim around that time. Maybe I can pinpoint him that way.

One thing he might be able to do, is stand just outside of your land, assuming your land isn't isolated, and cam into your store. He can see who all is in there that way, while being quite some distance away.

Yeh, it is a PI though(With no seperate plots so hes banned from the whole thing). Im pretty convinced hes got an alt coming and getting the names of people shopping. Or, he has a friend do it for him.

Everyone who has reported him IMing them ends up saying they didnt actually see him on my sim.

I put up a "Solicitors will be banned" notice because of him. And ever since then ive been getting quite a lot of IMs of people complaining about him. Im just worried that if he doesnt stop eventually people will stop visiting the sim.

=\ Just keep getting people to post the logs of what he said to you in IM, and keep ARing him. Get the people he is harrassing to AR him as well. That's an improper use of an alt, lol. :|

ARs are to handle violations of the ToS/CS through direct means. A very limited system that I see changing in the (hopefully) near future. Try a Support Ticket. These can be more geared to the right place through the support tree and you can correspond back and forth with a Linden for additional help/information.



Yes! By all means! I had not realised you were a concierge owner. You are paying for the service by being a concierge account. Use it. Though, again, the my not be able to help with immeadiate action. They deffinately should be able to help direct you in the proper channels to go through, or actions to do, to do as much as legally possible.

~Jessy

Also, if this is a PI, who owns it? Have you contacted the owner of the sim? She/he may not want to be involved, but she/he may also put their foot down and tell this idiot to grow up and play in his own sandbox and leave yours alone.

~Jessy

Thanks. I`ll put in a support ticket to concierge and hope for the best.


I own the sim. Its actually my shop on the entire thing.... Not sure why he has some unhealthy fetish with it.

This is too obvious, but... Is the whole sim auto-return and/or no-script? If not, he could have a sensor somewhere, scanning for your customers.

I very much doubt if you are going to get anywhere on this. You can ban anyone you see behaving inappropriately, but you are not going to get information about who is linked to whom, or their account details.

The only way to identify that X is an alt of Y is to look for common characteristics, which depends on you knowing Y pretty well.

one thing You can do is post a sign( if it won't spook your customers too badly)askin them that if they recieve an im from this person(s),to save the ims, and notecard them to you, that way you have a date, time, and some evidence to put into the ARs. i have noticed that in stores that let thier customers know whats happening, it reduces if not stops the harassment. i hope you get him/her, cause this sucks.

We at Primal Art sympathise with you JesseAitui, since we have experienced similar problems, and can't help wondering if it is the same person. Like you though, there seems to be little we can do, short of constantly banning alts. Whilst competition is healthy, it is definitely not ethical or acceptable to poach customers from anothers shop and we would happily support any initiatives anyone can come up with to combat this kind of problem.

One idea we have implemented is employed staff to assist customers in our main store and keep an eye on visitors, so anyone just sitting there attempting to poach our customers will be spotted and banned immediately. Yes, it costs us money, but our customers do also like the fact there is someone there to talk to about custom work and alterations.

I hope this idea may give you a suggestion, but any ideas anyone else has would be most welcome, as we all need to work together to try and stamp out this kind of theft which affects us all.

Another idea may be to form a tattoo group, where we can all keep each other informed of offenders who we can then all ban from our land and stores.

hiya Jesse! what i would do is:

- hire a security guard
- eject anyone less than 2 weeks old from my sim (unless i have lot of newbie customers), i saw some places that do that
- maybe even offer prizes to anyone who give you detailed logs about this harrasser
- ask my group (you must have a group for your shop's fans ) to report any bad activity they encounter on the island


and also, in world - region/estate i would check debug and "get top scripts" to see a list of scripts on my land.. who knows who placed what there...

Soooo i`m still having major problems with this guy. Every support ticket has been answered with a "we took care of the situation but can not disclose details"..... Yet i keep getting complaints about him from customers who are shopping on my land.

I sent in a support ticket to concierge and have yet to hear back.............

Are visits to lindens california office permitted?

Yes.

Aside from that, however, I'd go back into Support and REopen all the Tickets they closed. In response to the "we took care of it" I'd write simply "No, you did NOT take care of it.".

Possibly sumbit a Ticket for lack of Support on the other Ticket(s). That ~might~ get it through the thicker skulls (hey! There's always hope!)

I'd also suggest trying a Live Chat through the Support page. I actually had sucess with that today. And on a SATURDAY 0.0 Boy, was I shocked.

You may have to go to Mandy's suggestion and hire out security for a brief time to eject/ban the alts. That would depend on how much of a nusience this idiot is. Personally, if I recieved an IM from someone while shopping telling me of another place, I'd probably AR them for spamming me with unsolicited IMs.

Where was your store again? I may just pop in and browse with friends to submit ARs and make fun of this idiot *smirks* I love a battle of wits with unarmed opponents.

~Jessy

Griefer alts are usually on unverified accounts. I created two shops, a large mainstore for verified residents and a smaller one for unverified ones. On the land of the second shop, scripting and building is disabled. I also don't care that much what people do there, since I make 95% of my revenue at my main store.

Might work for you too... if he would only be able to interact with the "no payment info" part of your customers, then you don't have much to lose.

Another thing that might help: place a clearly visible sign that informs every visitor about the names of your shop personnel and asks them to report any scammer who tries to sell them something in your shop.

Sorry for sounding like a total Newbee..but what's an 'ALT'...?

An alternate account. Say, you create one account, and then go back and create a second account. That second account is your alt.

An alternate account of someone. You can create multiple accounts in SL, so griefers often come back with an alt account under a different name, after their main (their first account) got banned.

Ok folks..thanks!!

It's too bad that some people choose to use unethical business tactics.. he's using your ad to steal customers... here's a few suggestions:

1. File a seperate abuse report each and every time it happens. The squeaky wheel gets the oil. Once LL realizes that you are not getting satisfaction, they'll eventually boot the guy for good. (which they can via the IP address and ISP). Seems to me LL is very forgiving, even to people who are caught doing really bad things.. but, if you stay on them, they'll (after a few suspensions and handslaps), will ultimately ban someone for good.

2. Fight fire with fire. Since he's using alts to gain access to your land, make some alts of your own.. put on some freebie tats, and visit your location, and appear to be a customer of your own business. He'll approach you either via IM or in person, and when he does, just politely decline, log off, then back on using your regular avatar, and ban him. Perhaps if you force him to create more and more alts, he'll give up and go elsewhere.

3. Do not ever show anger or disgust towards him, he know's LL is lame when it comes to booting people for good, and that's his advantage. If he see's that he's "getting" to you, it will only encourage him to continue. Once you nail down who he is, simply ban him. Failing to directly IM him demanding, or asking him to stop, and just winding up banned will confuse and bug him. (See how the tables will begin to turn? Who's buggin' who now?).

4. Post a sign in your store. Basicly, create a short message in Gimp or Photoshop explaining that someone is trying to steal business from you, and to disregard anyone approaching or IMing about doing business. I recomend Something like this:

Attention: An unethical person is trying to steal business from me by lurking using alts to try to steal customers from me. Please do not help him by responding to IM's from anyone while you are here shopping, please help me stop this unethical person who is stealing customers from me. Thank you.

Keep it short and simple, make it VERY conspicuous, place the sign on all 4 walls so that anyone shopping will see it.

5. Post the name of your business here, and I will "shop" your store, and report the name of his alt if he contacts me, and if anyone else in the forum here wants to do the same, they can.

Hope that helps! Good Luck!

Hi, thanks for the suggestions.

Its a bit hard actually because he does not IM people with an alt. what he does is use the alt to get in my shop, and then use his other account to IM people. I have no idea what his alt name is and its hard to figure it out as he never uses it to directly IM my customers.

I suppose if I ever did find out what it was and banned it, hed make more. I just wish LL would IP ban him from my sim if possible