Alts... how do you know?

Hi ^^,

I was just wondering if there is any way to tell which accounts / avatars are alts and which are mains... or if it is possible for the public to find out whether one person owns multiple accounts and what these are?

I'm not sure it's possible, but I wasn't certain... I thought it might be possible with scanners or gadgets or something. Sorry I don't know much 'bout these things... ^^;

No sarcastic answers please, help a noob... ^^;

Thanking-yous!

Dee ^^

I don't even think the Linden can tell...

Otherwise all these Griefers would be caught spot on

The only way I know of is through interaction. I find some people have small tell tale signs that enable you to know it's them no matter what face they put on. It can be the way the always misspell a certain word or them laughing at certain-in jokes.

If you're looking for a technological way to tell..then no...I'm unaware of any device or gadget that would be able to let you know.

Thank you both for your help ^^

you dont.




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Linden Labs guarantees the persons First Life identity. The only thing that attaches two accounts owned by the same person is through First Life.

You could attempt to deduce an alt. Usually they resemble each other. If one account owns land the other account likely is in the land group. They are rarely on at the same time. They type the same way, use the same figures of speech, etc.

However be careful how far you go with such speculation since divulging any first life information about someone else to people is against the TOS

Just about everybody who has been around a while and is relatively active has an 'alt'.

There are exceptions of course, and the main thing to note is that the 'main' may be even *less* of an indication of who you are dealing with than the 'alt' is.

Typical 'good' reasons for alts:

1) Getting back on the grid to contact someone about business, when your 'main' character is unable to log out due to a grid bug

2) Checking out technical stuff - so you can see what's wrong with your region and try to solve any issues with it. This can be really hard to do if you are answering yet another unique IM every 10 to 15 seconds.

3) Someone you know only on the grid is in trouble - *real* trouble - and you need to do your best to get them to seek (usually professional) help.

4) Your main avatar is messed up in some way that nobody knows how to fix.


Typical bad reasons:

1) You can't seem to hide from your own character flaws, so you just kill yourself off and start all over again. Karmic, huh?

2) Spying, snoopin', lurking, and all that other skanky stuff.



It's also considered really ethically bad by many (most?) to go anywhere near people you know with an alt.


No way to really know who you are dealing with.

Even if they give you RL info, what is that? Ok, someone answered the phone at a location - but was it Grandpa or was it Junior?

couple others -

-Seperating your SL Business life from your SL Personal Life.

-Role Playing characters

-Bad break-ups with crazy people (though this probably counts as your #4 lol)

for testing purposes... still unsure what/how permissions affect object/scripts in objects? tricky script that behaves differently depending if the owner or group members are using it? don't want to make friends stand around while you fix scripts between bugchecks? make an alt to test with.

Huh? Where did that "ethic" come from?

My main created me as an alt for testing purposes, and over time I developed into a character of my own and started a business. But my main and I still share same property and many of the same friends. I've been very upfront with friends and neighbors about being the alt of my main, since we both hang around the property a lot.

I started off trying to keep my alt separate, and not reveal her true origins to my friends, but it just wasn't feasible since so many of my SL friends are people I know in RL. And it felt incredibly deceitful to pretend I was a stranger; the strain must have shown because at least one friend guessed immediately and I couldn't think of any good reason not to admit it when she asked.

So does this make me some kind of ethical pariah in SL? Funny, no one else has even made passing reference to such a social faux pas.

I think the most common reason for an alt is the lack of privacy in SL. We're all just an IM away from eachother. This means if you've been around in SL for a while then there's a lot of people who can (and will) contact you over the silliest of things. So sometimes it's nice to be able to get away from all that.

In the real world, the only people who can contact me are the people who have my phone number or address. Yet in SL anybody can contact me.

What the hell were Linden Lab thinking when they designed their messaging system?

I wonder why they don't just go and put our phone numbers over our avatars heads?

Well you've admitted yourself that you felt deceitful. So it seems odd that you're questioning why it's "unethical".

I use my alt for testing, to catch griefers, and to get away from IMs so I can enjoy SL. If I could just turn off all IMs and leave chat going I doubt I'd use my alt much. It would also help tremendously when trying to run a discussion meeting.

Worse than IM interruptions is the expectation people have that you must reply, even if you're "Busy." I think quite a few people in SL think of it as an IM client.

IM is the reason for many alts.

I vote for a Block option,
Mute is an okay temp solution.
Block, no msg to non responsive IMs and sends or 'user is offline'.
Outta sight outta mind, good riddance!

We're talking at cross purposes.

My interpretation of the first message is that it is unethical to MIX your alt worlds. In other words, you're supposed to keep them separate and any cross-over is considered unethical. I tried doing that and it just didn't feel right.

So either I misinterpreted this post (had to read it several times over to figure out what they were talking about) or you did.

Be cautious here, as certain misspellings or mistypings are common, such as the infamous "p for o".