Why being in Second Life makes you even more vulnerable to crazies than just being on the web in general and Linden Lab are fine about it

Now you may remember this post RedZone – The tip of the Second Life spyware iceberg

“Sadly, RedZone isn’t the only scanner that does this, there are lots of them around that no-one ever hears of.”

and this follow up post Privacy Intrusion – Coming to a Virtual World Near You

“Privacy on the internet is like living in the middle of nowhere, with no close neighbours and no curtains.  It’s an illusion, you can reduce your risk but never completely eliminate it.

….

What’s different in these platforms is that without your knowledge or consent they will take your avatar name, your ip address and possibly your tracking data and there’s no easy way to stop them. This is made worse because most people don’t even realise this is possible, let alone likely. A lot believe that only the platform owner has that kind of information are shocked to find the opposite is true.”

Both times I warned that there are groups of people out there in Second Life and other virtual worlds who disregard people’s assumed rights to privacy in their crazed pursuit of people they believe to be wrongdoers.

I hope you’re ready for this, it’s the latest of the scanners to become the topic of Second Life user angst. This latest one is jaw droppingly unbelievable.  Certainly if someone ever told you this story outside of Second Life you’d laugh at them but unfortunately it’s true.

There’s a couple of inworld groups who have appointed themselves the protectors of second life.  One is called the SL Police Department (SLPD) and the other the Justice League Unlimited (JLU).  One group has a taste for dressing as police, the other group has members who like to get around dressed and named as their favourite comic book superhero. Yep, we’re talking their undies on the outside of their tights look.

This sounds like the run of the mill normally pathetic Second Life losers, right?  Wrong.  These guys are completely fucked in the head and unfortunately they’re on the grid near you.

Let’s list their crimes against Second Life users now.

• Since before 2007 they have maintained a wiki where they list the names of inworld account that they believe are either griefers, not fully supportive of their groups or are of interest to them.

• They also troll Facebook, other social media, SL Universe and other forums,the official second life forums and copy all real life information posted by the target account into the wiki.

• Not only that but they will approach people and try to prise information out of them in IM or will just log their chat.

All of which goes into their damn wiki.  They also document any allegations against these people that they feel like making – unsubstantiated or not.

Just for laughs I’ll also point out that apparently one of their leading lights believes he’s working for Scotland Yard, the CIA and Homeland Security I think – don’t quote me on the last two as my mind glazes with incredulity every time I read this.

So if you’ve ever posted anything anywhere about your real life since at least 2007 under the name of your account, it’s probably on their wiki.  They note your real name, if you’re married, how many kids you have, where you live, if you’ve got a terminal illness or any disability and will use it against you if they can – baiting you in the forums or if they think you’re particularly law breaking they’ll contact your employer to try to get you sacked, contact your university or if you’re dying they’ll contact your next of kin through Facebook and pretend to be a friend of yours so they can confirm you’re really dying or dead and not faking it. I’m not making this up, apparently they’ve done all of this and more.

Is your head shaking like a noddy dog yet and are you feeling like you’ve slipped into a parallel universe?  There’s more!

• If you complain about it, it seems they track people like you and when you log in they’ll start to harass you.  In some cases they’ll even tp to where you are to do it – apparently using a hacked viewer that spoofs some call to the server that lets them map you.

• They also capture IP addresses and do alt matching

• They also have AR parties to have accounts banned from the grid – according to the allegations, they will fake chat logs to post with the AR and LL doesn’t verify the log before banning.

Charming isn’t it?  There are allegations of much worse behaviour from these people but you probably wouldn’t believe it.

Now this wiki of theirs was first leaked in early 2010 – almost 2 years ago.  Linden Lab have known about since at least then and seem to think it’s ok for this gross invasion of privacy.  These people literally go around hoovering up every bit of information out on the web they can get on you to piece together your life. Their wiki is so insecure that it was completely copied in 2010 and is being leaked now.

Think about it – If you’re on their watch list and they see you post a goodnight to people on plurk or twitter, they can look you up. They may know how many kids you have, they know where you live, they know you’re a sole parent..  These people are behaving in a way that looks to me to be certifiable – would you trust them not to come after you?  and even if they don’t, the data has been leaked and anyone who knows where to find it can subsequently find you.

Welcome to the modern day internet horror story.  People get upset about the amount of data Facebook and Google+ hold, it’s nothing compared to what these guys have in an unadulterated form. They’re taking no steps to protect the data, which they have no right to have remember, and they use it however they see fit.

The JLU/SLPD make zFire and RedZone look harmless by comparison.  These aren’t kids doing this but guys who are middle aged and they don’t give a shit what you think, they’ll just keep collecting and collating the data.

Linden Lab of course are fine with this.  Are you?  If you’re not, feel free to send @rodvik a tweet and ask him yourself.  They like us using social media and I’m sure he may eventually be happy to oblige.

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Please, please remember that anything you post anywhere on the internet, from inworld chat to the sl blogs to twitter or facebook or Google+ is readily available to anyone obsessed with finding information on you.  No conversation or post should be considered private – no matter how locked down you think that particular channel is. Even a private IM can be used and stored in a database if you’ve given information to the wrong person and in Second Life there seems to be a lot of these wrong people. You may think you’re OK but they’re tracing families as well – you may feel you have the right to endanger yourself but you really don’t have the right to expose those closest to you to these kinds of people.  Please be careful.  There are other groups scanning your data inworld and we have no idea yet just how far they’ve gone in their efforts to find out who an account belongs to.