Personal Security (Griefers)

This page specifically deals with ‘griefers’ in general and what you can do about those annoying little devils. Please refer to the Covenant for specific information relating to your Security Alarm System in Alba Estates.

As a resident in Alba Estates, your best defence is to return home and ensure your Security System is activated. The Security will automatically eject people from your home after 30 seconds. Repeat offenders are automatically banned from your parcel by the System. You can also do this manually by right-clicking on them and selecting ‘Eject and Ban’. You can also go to your ‘About Land’ and add the griefer to the banned list.

Please be aware that we must comply with the Linden Lab Terms of Service (ToS) in that a Security Systems MUST give a 30 second warning before ejection.

1. Griefers – What are they?

It's a person who wants to upset your enjoyment of SL. Griefing is harassment, bothering, shooting in a safe or non RP-related zone and includes verbal abuse as well as other types of violations outlined in the Terms of Service (ToS) or Community Standards (CS). Their motivations are simple in that they get their kicks out of trying to irritate and dominate you.

- First off, always ‘Stay Calm’. Why stay calm? Because it spoils their fun! They're looking for a reaction, so they get bored if you just stay calm and say nothing.

- Don't give them the attention they want, which is a reaction. Do NOT under any circumstances inflict damage on or abuse the griefers avatar. It gives them the chance to report you and make you look like the bad person!

- Abusive language or bumping, shooting, caging, orbiting and deforming you are the most used forms of griefing in SL. We`ll have a closer look at them further down.

2. The Basics

Whatever a griefer tells you, don’t believe. They have no real powers and most important they cannot kill you, even if you are on a damage enabled sim and they use guns! You cannot die in SL!

The only thing that can happen is that you may end up back at your home location. You will NOT lose any money or inventory. So again, stay calm and NEVER pay a griefer who threatens you in any way. That is absolute nonsense!

3. The ‘Verbal’ Griefer:

These types of griefer can hurt the most if you allow yourself to listen to them. Don’t listen!

What to do:

Right-click on their Avatar and select ‘Mute’, or ‘Block’. Muting/Blocking will give you five advantages:

- No more chat from that person in chat history, including gestures.

- You can`t receive IM’s from that person, including group chat messages.

- You can`t receive items from them.

- You won`t hear their Voice, if Voice is activated on that area.

- All objects from this person are muted too, including attachments.

4. The ‘Bumping, Pushing or Hitting’ Griefer:

Some griefers will become more annoyed if you ignore them and will try to push your Avatar around. So let`s take a look at Bumps, Pushes and Hits. Ask a friend to bump into you and then from the top Viewer menu please look at Help > Bumps, Pushes & Hits and see what it says. It’s a great tool to figure out who your griefer is.

Remember though that most newbies really have initial problems moving and have no idea it`s ‘unfriendly’ to bump someone in SL. The same applies if you teleport into a new area that uses a landing point and people will land on your head or bump into you, it is not their intention. A lot of residents will apologize if they bump into you, even if it was caused by lag. It depends on their character and experience though.

What to do:

This is so easy it’s crazy.

Option 1 is to sit on a bench or chair! You can’t be pushed/bumped if you sit on a static object.

Option 2 is to enable ‘movelock’. This simply locks your Avatar in place so it cannot be moved at all. On the Firestorm viewer, this is located in the top menu items as Avatar > Movement > Movelock. Or press Ctrl+Alt+P on your keyboard. Other viewers may vary.

5. Abuse Reporting

Do you really have privacy from the Lindens? NO! Everything that is said in chat or IM is logged by LL whether encrypted or not and includes all inventory transfers. Now the good news is that only the ‘detectives’ can access it and these are real people paid real money to investigate crimes in SL. Abuse Reports are how they find out who to chase.

In LL there is a team who checks submitted Abuse Reports and the other team deals with everything else. So when you file an Abuse Report, it is taken seriously. Therefore don`t give them an excuse to ignore it. Fill out as much as possible.

How?

Go to Help > Report Abuse or, right-click the offending object (a cage for example) and select More > More > Report Abuse.

Often it’s better to report the object itself if there is one as this will also tie back to the owner of it and you don’t then have to fill out two Abuse Reports. Otherwise just right-click the griefing avatar and go from there.

Here are the most important things in a report:

A. Clearly identifying the griefer is essential as it really speeds the investigation, along with the exact time, date and location. Make sure you have checked the ‘Include Screenshot’ option and include the screenshot of the scenario. All of this combined provides valuable evidence and leads onto the following categories in the Abuse Report.

B. ‘What kind of griefing/abuse was it?’ A headline such as, "A guy was mean" would be useless. "I got ... by..." is better. Other info such as chat quotes (if there are any) help too. "Assault" should be for weapon usage and a screenshot is more important then. Chat quote(s) would be good to prove harassment. (Remember the zero privacy rule and LL logging everything? Makes sense now doesn`t it? LL can go back and read over chat logs.

C. ‘Disclosure’ is used if you report someone who tells other people private information about you or other people such as e-mail or even your real-life name.

D. ‘Age’ is used if you report someone who admits to being underaged (less than 18 years) and should be on the SL teen grid....etc.

After you have reported the griefer, object or incident (if you think it is worth it and clearly breaks the LL ToS), you will receive an email from Linden Labs once your report has been received and they are on it to investigate.

6. Summary

Stay calm, use the tips outlined above and then report it.

If someone is rude, don`t listen and simply mute them.

Avoid giving away personal information to other residents.

Never pay a griefer.

If getting bumped or pushed, simply sit on a chair.

If you’re lucky, you will never be griefed but if you are, this page should help.

Useful References:

A. Terms of Service (ToS)

B. Community Standards (CS)

C. How to file an Abuse Report

D. Video Tutorial/How to report abuse and handle griefing 

E. Video Tutorial/Free yourself from a trap

F. Video Tutorial/Sit down to stop being pushed