Griefers, Cages, and Linden Labs

I was on vacation for the past week. I returned to an angry mob with pitchforks around the New Paris Eiffel Tower and a truckload of emails from individuals who had been caged on my island by objects that appeared to be owned by ME!

I don't have any cages nor do I make use of any I find laying around! What the hell is going on? How can an object that is not mine say that I own it?


These individuals who grief do not stop. You ban them and they use another alt. I know the subject of IP banning has come up several times in the past but for God's sake LL, PLEASE get the ball rolling! If there's some guy sitting behind a computer using his alts to grief me or anyone else and has unlimited access to my island (REGARDLESS of the fact that I do not want him there ) simply because he can just go create another account...something's wrong here. The griefing doesn't stop just because you ban an avatar. The same dude (or dudette) can keep coming back over and over and over.

If John Doe (RL) is using his avatar to cage ppl on my sim, and I ban him...he can use an alt. Hey guess what... I don't want John Doe on my sim PERIOD with ANY account! Obviously John Doe is purposely gaining access to my sim to grief others. Why should he be allowed to continue to have access?


Cyberstalking/harrassment is a crime is it not?
http://crime.about.com/od/online/a/web_harass.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberstalking

Please put some tools in place so that we can either prevent this or deal with it. I am sick of wasting my time banning people and dealing with the complaints that are not being addressed via AR.

If LL is not going to take action, please provide us the means to do some in one way or another.

Sorry for venting. I guess my real question is what's up with the cages/objects that appear to be mine? How does THAT happen?

I agree. When I ban somebody, I see it as banning the person sitting at the keyboard, not the pixles on my screen. It would be really great to ban by something more than avatar name.

Sometimes, people will ask me about some object of mine that I don't actually own. It's usually a transparent cage or a flame script or something that doesn't pick up wll on the right-click. Maybe people were looking at the owner of objects behind the cages? /me hopes so because it's a bit scary if not..

There are ways a griefer can completely change the nature of a modifyable object, thus shifting blame for the creation of the object to someone else. If they trick you into accepting a copy of something like that and you res it, their griefing object shows you as owner.

hmmm How is that done? That sucks.

They can give you something neat, sell you something mundane.... a trojan horse basically.

For instance, a simple piece of furniture, a ceiling fan, just about any object designed to sit out in the world. That object can sit idle for a long time, until someone decides enough are spread across the land to make a widespread impact. An attack is then triggered. A couch could rez a cage or whatever, which would be owned by the unsuspecting person.

In other words, there's no way to tell that a normal poseball script is really "just" a poseball script.

I did have a paragraph explaining how to do it, but there might be someone of bad will that doesn't currently know how reading this, so I deleted it.

I was afraid this would be the answer. I have every confidence that the Lindens can investigate and see that a cage or whatever was rezzed by a script and see also that the script in question was created by someone else and not modifyable by the unsuspecting victim. However, it concerns me that they also may overlook this and ignore anyone's request to investigate it in the event an abuse report is filed, received, and 'resolved'.

It's scary to think anyone could be banned for something like this and have their emails to the abuse manager never returned or acknowledged as I have seen others state in the past.

Geez, I'll be sure to only accept stuff/rez stuff from trusted people.
Makes me wonder if there is something on my island rezzing cages.

Probably best not to mention how in the help forum for new users.

Except for the fact that a script cannot rez anything not contained in the same object.... If your poseball contains a cage in it's contents, that would be a sure sign

Well... unless you can look at the source code.

Most won't, but any object that gets widely distributed with naughtiness in the source code will get noticed by somebody.

Of course, most of the time we buy scripted objects the scripts are set on nomod, so we can't see the source code of the scripts. Perhaps its time for an open source ethic among SL scripters to that griefer scripts can't hide what they're doing?

-Rob

Were the complainants real AV's or could they be the griefers bots making false claims?

I have done that before, but only for a couple of days until things cooled down. The problem is that there are renters on my island who simply cannot gain acceess to their shops or condos. Our sister sim is a residential only sim and the reswidents there often venture to our sim for fun. I got several complaints in those few days from the residents that some of them could not get onto the sim.

Those WERE very peaceful days, but I don't wish to ban innocent folks who live, work, and play on my sim. It's a shame that some have to spoik it for others.

No need to rez, the object in question (furniture or else) or a prim of it can become the griefing tool.

I spoke to one of the 'victims' after receiving a rude message. The person explained that they were caged by one of my objects and did not appreciate it.

I asked her when...where...how? She explained that a cage near the New Paris Eiffel Tower caged her and that it belonged to me. When I explained that I was on vacation and could not have possibly done this....nor WOULD I have done this, she understood.

Others were not so understanding and were not so polite.

If the llRezObject function is in a script, the owner should get a message similar to the animation permission prompt or the debit permission prompt that says:

The object you have rezzed need permission to rez other objects. Give permission?

Yes or No
Cancel or Allow?


That would be nice since this is obviously becoming an issue and is being abused by griefers.

It's a good idea, you should make a proposal.

Is everything the fault of bots these days? Have you ever seen a griefer bot?

Why would someone make a bot that IM's people with random "you attacked me" accusations?

Why wouldn't they, if they could find a free script for it?

Why would the griefers do any of the things they do? Their entire purpose is to annoy other players, this certainly would annoy people.

Because there is no such thing as a free bot script, that's why. Making bots is not trivial, and is well beyond the abilities of most casual griefers. There is a really bizarre tendancy now to blame all kinds of crap on bots that just doesn't make sense.

As for griefers in general, who can understand them? They are like cranky two-year olds who like to throw a fit and sometimes say "I'm sorry" if they get in trouble, then do it again two minutes later. What a bunch of morons.