Can malicious residents cause permanent damage?

Following on from the thread about the person who crashes after a particular individual threatens, I was wondering exactly how much harm a malicious SL-er can do to another.

I'm a bit confused. I've experienced normal sandbox griefing and can handle that OK, plus being ejected, orbited etc. - that's all just a minor nuisance and easy recover from by TP-ing or logging out.

But I hear about people being shot or even killed in SL and I wonder exactly what this means. I've also heard of avatars' appearance being changed.

If you are shot or killed do you recover by logging out or TP-ing?

Being killed in SL has no lasting affect. When you die, all that happens is you teleport home. If you have no home, you end up at a welcome area. That's all.

In most areas, you can't even die. Most places in SL are safe zones. If you're in an unsafe area, you'll see a hit point meter at the top of your screen.

As for permanent damage, my only word of caution regarding that would be to use common sense. Be careful what you download, what you agree to, and what you say to whom. Now that the client has been open-sourced, among the many improvements that are in store, we'll undoubtedly see some malicious versions of the viewer start to appear. As Cory Linden put it, "Who are you gonna download your SL from, secondlife.com, or Bob's Porn Shack?".

Objects can be scripted to take money from you. Don't ever agree to let any object take your money if you don't own the object.

Objects can also be scripted to listen to your conversation, or to ask you for your account password. Whatever your password is, never ever say it out loud in-world, at least not in any context that could identify it as a password.

Beyond these kinds of scams and such, there's nothing anyone can actually do that would hurt you. If you fall for a scam, it's your own fault, so don't.

I think I once had brain damage after being forced to talk to several residents in Cordova. Thankfully, it wasn't spearmint though. I mean permanent, sorry.

The mostly like way for someone to suffer "permanent" damage in SL - loss of inventory, builds destroyed, account banning - is through social engineering and password cracking. There have been a few examples of this I've heard of and I'm sure lots more that I haven't. It mostly affects groups; someone makes an alt and gets into a position where they are given some mod rights on group property, say, or co-opts someone already within that position, or cracks their password, and bang, one wakes up one morning and the group's builds are gone.

Basically you have to be very, very sure before giving rights to anyone that could allow them to delete stuff, and even surer before giving them rights to give other people rights. This has been made a little safer recently with the improved group tools, where officers can have different sorts of rights.

And obviously, pick a good password. "ghcv88$3490p" rather than "smellycat".

I shall use the password immediately. Thank you, Ordinal.

Do you have much money?

Never mind, I'll check myself....

I'll piggyback on Conifer's question, because I think this is just asking for amplification: Is there any danger in simply accepting an object offered? I don't mean allowing my avatar to be animated, or the various other things like that. I mean "So and so is offering you an object called__________ ." I accept or decline. I'm regularly offered objects in public areas, from unknown people, and, to avoid confrontation, I often accept and then delete later, without rezzing or wearing the object. Is there any risk in doing this?
Thanks

You're going to give me money me too? You're truly a wonderful person.

I think its a bad idea to accept objects from strangers, and perfectly reasonable to decline. In all likelihood they will simply be busy offering the same object to everyone in the public area.

Oh yes. Er, I might have to take all of your money out first, because... there wouldn't be room for all of the money that I'll put in there otherwise. So don't report that or anything. I'll put the money in soon, honest.

It's a bad idea to accept things from anybody, if you don't want those things. It's just more load on the asset store, even if you are going to turn around and delete it. But to answer Taylor's question directly, no, there's no danger in accepting. If it's an object made with malicious intent, its payload can't be delivered while it sits in your inventory. It would have to be rezzed. Slyvia is right.. it's perfectly reasonable to decline such offers.

The objects you are offered, if they come from people you aren't talking to, are probably spam. You can't actually be damaged if you take an object though - they can't do anything when they're just sitting in your inventory.

You should however be careful if you rez the objects. This is a vector for grid-crashing objects to be spread. If you really want to see what one of these things is, do it in a "safe" area i.e. one where everything is turned off, scripts, physics, push, the whole lot. Never just rez something unless you're absolutely sure what it is.

Thank you for the helpful replies. I think I'll just decline now. Who needs more cheese anyway?

I have plenty of wine to go with your cheese!

I'd like to also add, be careful with what you pull out of freebie boxes to rez. Most people who put them out are really being helpful, but some are definitely malicious. I rezzed some sort of freebie building out of a box on my land once and all I could see was a huge black object, and dozens of messages about my objects not being able to enter all kinds of parcels. and THEN I started getting autoreturns on these mysterious objects from 2 sims away!!! I ended up flying around and deleting big black prims wherever I could find them so as not to get my neighbors mad at me - add to permanent damage, the risk of getting suspended/banned for prim litter and pissing off your neighbors for miles around.

Thanks for all the informative answers. Now I can confront gun-pointing griefers with complete confidence!

Incidentally, while out on a walk round SL yesterday, I came across a custom motorcycle for sale at 500L$. Next to it was a box with floating text explaining that 'this guy' was trying to sell the bike at 500L$ when it was a freebie and to click the box for an identical, but free, motorcycle! Nice one!!!!

It's purty basic advice, ya know, an applies in any world: dun take candy from strangers!

Mari

I don't think anyone mentioned it, but be very careful about who you give mod rights to as well. Despite the name, mod rights allows the other to "Take" any of your (no-transfer) rezzed items, or just permanently delete them, as well as just merely modifying the prims.

One time a friend gave me a box full of scripts, weeks later when I was clearing inventory I rez it to have a look and before I know what's happening it starts raising the land on my rental, which happens to be on a private sim, so I ended up with a 100m tall mountain engulfing my entire house. So even if you know the person who gives you an item, don't assume that they know what "damage" it can cause .