Danger, Danger Linden!

It's bad enough being regularly griefed by people that the Lindens can't or won't get rid of from their world.

They now have sicced a Linden on me on Twitter whose job seems to be to exasperate me and needle me with those typical, laconic Lindenisms of the sort we're long familiar with:

@Prokofy If you have concerns about TOS violations, I urge you to file an AR which will be read and duly acted upon if necessary.

@Prokofy I'm sorry, but there is really only one response to this question, and other residents always receive the same answer @rodvik

@Prokofy I'm not aware of that. The presence of LL employees in itself doesn't imply an endorsement of a sim. @rodvik

Danger Linden -- "don't let the name scare you" -- was created on Twitter just recently, and for a time only followed one person -- me. He isn't just a random Linden who just randomly joined Twitter and began chatting -- he's clearly on a mission.

His first communication was to try deflect me from my repeated tweets asking the Lindens why they had let Woodbury University's infamous Tizzers Foxchase back into Second Life, after "permabanning" him and his little griefer friends at least three times and seizing all their land.

When I asked Tommy Linden about this, after Tommy innocently (or not-so-innocently) posted a snapshot of his cavorting on Sandvich, the new griefer island, with the re-spawned alts of old banned griefers, he gave me the boilerplate, too, about how you can't discuss your complaints about other residents on the forums or on profiles, you have to file abuse reports.

Naturally, the abuse reports have been filed. But they don't work. The Lindens keep letting these vandals in. Why? It's not oversight. It's deliberate. It's been brought to their attention -- they aren't doing anything about it. Linden Lab's legal department had to be summoned to deal with the Woodbury griefers and get rid of them and even their developer last time, after repeated abuse reports were filed, and hardly only from me. So what gives?

Danger  -- born in March of this year -- takes the tack that there must be something wrong with my land settings. Why, if people are putting prims on my lawn, he says -- like Eddie Haskell -- I should just open up my land settings menu and change them.

There's a number of things wrong with this notion -- and either he doesn't realize this, or he does and is continuing to deadpan it on orders from Rodvik. I'm quite certain now his agenda is to keep goading me, until finally he'll have some reason to ban me -- and this may be collusion directly related to the transition to Steam, and directly related to the clear, obvious executive decision from Rod Humble to allow the permabanned Wrong Hands/Woodbury goons carry the "community" for Steam. (?!) I can't fathom why any CEO would countenance such obvious outrages, but there it is. Daniel is part of the strategy on this, so that's why he's going on mute and ban and is not getting any more responses to his tweets.

Here, again, is the problem.

1. I maintain open, mainland groups. Many people think that's the root of my problem, or any griefing victim's problem, but as you shall see, it isn't. It does mean that a griefer can join the group and rez prims. I will not be closing my groups and inconveniencing people over an occasional griefer, because the problem of the griefer remains, and the Lindens still need to deal with him and his groups, and not pretend it's a land-setting "tools" problems. Here's why:

2. Even if you close the group, the griefers still put out prims anyway. It would be one thing if you ejected the griefer from the group he joined *during this log-on session* when he still retains the group tag status which may still confer on the ability to rez prims.

But if he has logged off already, and you've ejected him from the group, and closed the group, then when he logs back on with no group title now, how can he rez prims?! And yet he does. That's the exploit. That's what is happening.

3. Meanwhile, there's yet another issue. Even if someone has joined your group because your group is open, you can still change the settings so that there is no rezzing of objects on your land -- no build for a non-group member, and no-build for a group member too. But when those spaces are unchecked and the boxes left blank, the griefer can still rez prims. It's an exploit. And something broken about those powers in the group. Now, maybe the exploit is that if you have already joined the group, then no-group-build won't work on you.

But I tested that myself as a non-group alt, and I couldn't rez prims. My office is on no-build, no-object-entry, and yet the griefers still rez prims.

BUT I *could* rez prims, even though "group build" was OFF, if I joined the group. That means what used to deter even group members from building DOES NOT WORK. I don't know when this bug began happening -- I vaguely remember a JIRA on it. Anybody? Replicate it yourself. Turning off "group build" shouldn't enable even group members still to build -- that's the point! that's what it's about.

If that simple function worked, that would diminish the griefing greatly. I'm fairly certain the Lindens know about this bug and/or exploit, but they are doing nothing about it.

4. Furthermore, another exploit is being used -- the griefers are banning me and my tenants from our own land, a huge nuisance. The only people who should have that ability are the group officers and those tenants in the group who have been toggled on the roles permission list to be able to eject/ban.

So if an ordinary group member not at that level of permissions is able to add and remove from the ban list, that's an exploit.

Yes, again, this might be a function of having joined the group. Yet I find that even without being in the group at all, even without putting any avatars visible on the sim, the griefers are automatically injecting quickly and massively long lists of ban names into all parcels with some kind of script or rogue viewer. How? The Lindens apparently *do* know of this last ban exploit but they can't stop it.

In fact, I've been told by a few people "in the know" that the reason the Lindens can't stop any of this form of griefing of me and my tenants -- and other venues and rentals and groups in SL! -- is because what it amounts to is theft or illegal access to their own god-mode viewer, and they can't turn off those functions without turning them off for themselves.

I don't believe this, frankly, and I think there's a lot more they could be doing to stop this. As follows:

1. Return to the regime of instantly removing the griefer alts as soon as they are formed. The Lindens did have this regimen when they permabanned The Wrong Hands and Woodbury last time -- and they ran it faithfully for weeks until finally the griefers gave up. But none of the Lindens who did this are at the Lab any more.

2. At least remove the griefer alts faster than 4 or 7 days, as is the case now. They are being removed and that's great, but it's taking way too long. Any AR with the headline The Wrong Hands should get pretty routine and fast review.

And let me point out that the fact the Lindens have now deleted dozens of these alts lets us know that THEY do not accept the laconic boilerplate dismissals of Danger Linden and otherss who try to literalize this social problem in the usual geeky technical way that is so exasperating.

They don't say "We won't delete these accounts because they are rezzing prims from an open group on open land," they get it that you don't get to do that EVEN IF the tools allow you do it so. Harassment is harassment. The Lindens can be hugely annoying asses on their literalism -- like their refusal to treat chicken killings as griefing and destruction of property, and their snotty answer that it was "expected behaviour". But they get it that people entering groups that they haven't figured out how to make open, yet with functions to ban only some people, are still game for bans.

AND they totally grasp in a way neither Danger or likely even Rodvik graps that what's involved here ARE EXPLOITS. EXPLOITS, people.

3. Various other things can be done -- follow the inventory. The objects are named -- they are passed to me in inventory. They come from somewhere. They aren't re-built anew by every day-old alt. They are stored in either mule accounts, main accounts or group inventory somewhere -- or possibly in sandboxes somewhere with long return times. There are boxes that have names like "Prok supplies" that are first put out on land in these griefing attacks -- and then the rest of the effigies and junk then all emerge from them via a script.

So the Lindens can easily see where these assets are located as they do when looking to blacklist any objects and simply suspend all accounts with those griefing effigies in them, then see what they have. It won't be just day-old alts.

4. Another bold action is to close the proxy they use at least for a short period. That concentrates the little mind wonderfully. If buddies that also use that proxy that aren't griefing are then inconvenienced, they start to apply peer pressure on their miscreant fellow. The Lindens can contact managers of those proxy sites and say they have some recurring problems with certain people that they have to ask to be blocked, and they would get cooperation, surely.

5. The Lindens can monitor sims and see what agents are entering and running those ban list scripts. They should try to do more about that. I can't see how that requires them somehow being unable to use their own god powers. They don't need parcel-level god powers on the Mainland, duh! They treat each Mainland sim as we would a private island or island, and they have estate manager powers to handle a ban *at the sim level*. When they want to, Lindens apply mass bans to the whole Governor Linden "estate" which is the Mainland, and instantly remove all the prims owned by a griefer from every sim. I've seen them do it. That's why this arduous process I go through every time of unbanning myself, picking up prim litter from hundreds of parcels -- it truly isn't necessary.

One Linden with land management powers can come out and with one click, remove the griefer from the mainland period -- and from the people list -- and all his prims. They should work especially on finding the mechanism and perpetrators of those who are able to override not only group land bans on Mainland, but estate bans on private islands -- another exploit that people hate even talking about because the Lindens won't fix that, either.

6. If these actions are occuring because griefers log on with rogue viewers like ThugsLyfe -- why aren't they doing more to block *the viewer* itself? They can do that. They do do that. It's not just a policy. They follow it up with mechanical and engineered steps too. So they can take action. Why don't they?

The answer to the problem of Woodbury/The Wrong Hands griefing should be solved before SL is launched on Steam, not after, before it gets worse.

In the last week, I've had a number of tenants move out again because of griefing. This unfortunate woman who had a lovely build that happened to be on the parcel that Joanna Falmer last grief-raged from in Ravenglass got a huge axe through her build -- scary! -- and dozens of black effigies of me as an Obama campaigner that rezzed until the sim and/or her viewer crashed. Awful. I lose money for the month.

Another tenant lost about US $60 of breedables. She had put them out on a new rental, but the griefers crashed the sim by overrezzing the effigies and signs -- they have this automated. The Lindens didn't have a set-point on the sim for a recent time. So when they reset the sim, it went back in time two days, losing all those irreplaceable animals, other furniture and items, some of my builds and stuff and other people's stuff -- and also causing confusing with the rental boxes not showing their actual paid status or enough days. Havoc.

Daniel Linden -- a voice of authority -- has just claimed on Twitter:

Danger Linden ‏@DangerLinden

@Prokofy Even a hacked viewer can't override ban lists or build settings. So maybe you should have a look at those settings again.

But a hacked viewer and/or an exploit script CAN override ban lists -- we've all seen it. I'm put in my own ban list by people who DO NOT have that power in my group -- day old alts. They do that EVEN WHEN they haven't managed to join the group. Others who have seen this can post here. Only people with resident powers in my group have power to ban/eject -- and obviously only paid tenants have that status, and not day-old griefers with the very same costume they had the last 1,000 times they griefed. And no, there isn't a social hacker somewhere, either.  That really isn't the issue.

The issue is to stop telling me and my settings are wrong, and look at your server records and see the agents who are adding to ban lists. That's all.

 

 

Comments

[Johanes Frak]

All I see is you being verbally abusive to a linden for no reason at all.

[Kills Sak]

Guess it's time to fix your group permissions or find someone competent to do it for you. Until then i'll come back here when i need a laugh :3