Ready for a SecondLife horror story, boys and girls? Yes? Well then, read on!
Warning: This story contains an extremely creep-tastic story about SL ‘stalking.’
I have a bad habit of using GIMP , Plurk, and SL at the same time. Quite often, I don’t pay attention to all three very well. Last night was one of those nights. Well, at this particular time, I was focused on Plurk and GIMP. I was laughing it up with some friends on a plurk about God-knows-what and I saw a small box pop up in the corner of my monitor’s screen. An e-mail. Strange since I don’t use my Yahoo e-mail address for anything other than Flickr. But this was from someone specific: Alisa Menna. Out of curiosity, I clicked on it to open it up in Firefox. At which point, pictures of me in my private skybox on my residential land explode onto my screen as well as, and I quote, “and one can also expect to see a video of your interestingly decorated home here sometime in the near future” with a link to her youtube account.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I figured that turning off flying and rezzing, and placing my box at 1800m would be enough security from sim visitors and that residents would have enough respect to not cam around.
I was wrong.
I immediately returned to my idle SL window to look frantically for this person, frightened to no end. Who was this Alisa person? How did she get pictures of me? In my home? And how did she get my RL e-mail address?
I looked around my box quickly. No one. I cammed outside (benefit of having a draw distance of 512m) and didn’t see anyone floating around my box via someone else’s nearby parcel. However, by chance, I saw ‘Alisa Menna’ sitting 20m above me on my boyfriend’s building platform, next to his TARDIS. This freaked me out. How did she get up there? When? How long had she been there? I didn’t know. I shot an IM at her with a barrage of questions. What did I get in response?
“*** IM blocked by sender’s viewer”
What? Great. No IM. At this point, when I’m about to respond to her e-mail and demand to know answers…SHE DROPS INTO MY HOME! Ok, so first you take pictures of me while I’m in my home without my permission, then you come into my home without my permission? What are you thinking?!
Angrily I respond to her e-mail, feeling completely violated, asking her all sorts of questions. Her excuse as to why she did this? She has a draw distance of 1024m, she was bored, and she saw that I was a photographer.
Again: what?!
Ok, so you profile creeped me, too. That’s nice.
But my dear readers, it gets worse! Read on!
In the game of e-mail tag that she and I began to engage in, she began sending me pictures of Batman (all of which I ignored, finding them rather irritating, to be frank). All the while, I noticed that she was growing arrogant, as if she had a right to do what she did.
While awaiting her responses, I went back to her pictures of me and I noticed something odd: my house was empty.
I had finished decorating it and even had the builder over within hours of purchasing it. How was my house empty? Even stranger yet: I had changed since I had decorated my house. Green shirt to red shirt. I was in a red shirt in her pictures meaning they had to be taken AFTER I had decorated. Also, I’d like to point out that I was wearing sculpty sunglasses and have sculpty stairs behind me. Had these pictures been taken from Alisa’s home on the sim adjacent to mine? If so, the sculpties would not have loaded perfectly while the rest of the house, as seen in her pictures, remained barren. How long had she been camming me for? It’d been a few days since my house had been empty like in her pictures…had she been watching me since I moved to the sim? I don’t know.
Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure. The first is my picture showing some friends what the house looked like as soon as I finished decorating. The second is my picture showing the house as it is and out I am in when I recieve the e-mail from Alisa. The third is Alisa’s picture of me that she sent to my RL e-mail address.
See what’s missing?
So. Next time you decide to live on a public sim–make sure you don’t have happyfuntime or run around n00d.
You never know who’s watching you, my dear readers.
I wish parcel restrictions could work to separate a skybox from the rest of the sim. Someone came to my skybox once, we have sculpties packs with listing images on it for our work. They were for sale 0L$, because we are 2 to work for the same shop so i buy sculpts for both of us and then we share them (it is for the same business, so i guess it is better than giving them away for free to anyone). One day i receive a notecard from the designer of the sculpties, he wants me to remove the boxes, because people can buy them. I did and asked for more details. Someone came to my skybox, bought all my sculpties, then brought another person, and contacted the sculpts creator to let him know that i was giving out his work for free… He buys everything, and then goes to cry. That was the 1st time someone buys these, i verify my transactions everyday. We are never safe, even if we live very very high. It doesnt matter for some people, since it is not a restricted parcel. I wish restrictions could work in another way, letting us to restrict an height instead of the whole parcel. *sighs*
That is… REALLY creepy, to say the least. Sending you pictures of you, then… Batman? Contacting you through email but blocking your IMs? Those are actions of someone who is honestly mentally unbalanced and probably not aware of how to interact with real human beings. I hope you reported them, as even though this all sounds like “goofy” behavior it’s a symptom of a bigger issue. I’ve been on the wrong end of it myself (not in SL but another online forum) and it can snowball horrifically. If you haven’t already I highly recommend not emailing with them anymore.
Good luck!
Wow, that’s really creepy!
Step one : if you dont want people in your skybox, get a security device. Ohterwise as far as SL goes, expect people to drop in, yes its rude but they do it.
Secondly : as to your email there are many places which connect your email to your SL name, plurk and here are just for starters. You said it was connected to flickr, so probably from there then. This is why using anonymous emails is good
Thirdly: many viewers allow you to derez items from your screen to take nicer pics. This is probably what happened to your furniture.
Ohh and next time?? mute and ban ;) engaging with people like this only gives them what they wanted in the first place
Report her to her ‘mistress’
(taken from her first pick)
“i use the Restrained Love Viewer (RLV) cause i’m special.
Currently i can’t touch farther than 1.5m, use channels, chat, emote, IM, fly, see inventory, or edit
unfortunately i spend lengths of time gagged and because i haven’t the use of channels, open chat doesn’t work at all.. not even *alisa menna: …*
i can answer “yes” and “no”.. see the next pick please
If you have any concerns about me or if you just don’t want me around :( .. .. Let me or Rita Martian know.
Rita’s pet forever,
alisa”
Let this ‘Rita Martian’ know that her ‘pet’ is stalking you. *shrugs* Other than that, as Eclectic Wingtips said…mute & ban.
@Archan: :( That sucks. I’m sorry to hear that. I used to have stuff like that happen when I lived on the ground.
@Lila: Yes, I know. I plan on filing an AR within the next couple of days, once my SL calms back down for a day or two. I have seen this behavior both on forums/other websites and in real life, so as you can imagine–it freaks me out.
@Sfdsfd: Heh. Yes.
@Eclectic: 1) I live on a sim where no banlines are allowed and if you’re speaking of an orb–it needs to conform to the size of my parcel lest it cross over onto others’ land and that’s just flat rude. 2) Plurk uses a different e-mail address from my Flickr. Also, you wouldn’t be able to find my e-mail address on my Flickr, I specifically hid it for reasons that you can see if you read my response to Lila. 3) I have never heard of that, let alone anyone using that. 4) I did ban as soon as I realized where she was. Also–why mute when no IMs can be passed back and forth to begin with? I only e-mailed her to find out why/how she got my information, onto my parcel, took pictures of me, and into my house. After that, our e-mails grew rather cold from my end, which is when the Batman pictures began.
1) most orbs automatically only work on land you or your group own
2) Hidden email addresses are sadly not well hidden on most social sites… as i said this is why you should always be very careful to use anonymous emails
3) many viewers including but not limited to Kirsten and emerald have this feature, it is great for photography
4) glad you banned her, personally i would mute her.. why? she can pass you things and attempt to annoy you that way
get a hippo security system. we have one on our skybox and you can conform the bounding box to just your area :D
this story is really creepy and weird.. i don’t understand the stuff changing and your house being emptied though… did things just disappear completely or did they show back up in your lost and found as if returned?
oh nm i forgot about derez lol that still doesn’t explain your shirt changing colour O_o;
oh.. hi me again lol i went back and looked at that girl’s profile and the reason your ims were blocked was because she uses RLV which blocks her from iming people inworld. no excuse for how she was acting but that explains the im thing at least…
@Pumpkin: Sorry I missed you in my last response. x.x I didn’t see your comment. lol I would contact Rita but I spoke to the land owner and she handled it. I also don’t trust the whole, “If you have a problem with me, speak to So-and-so.” I have 14 avs. I could easily just say contact So-and-so and it still be me (which I do since I have an av specifically for event organizing, Equality Organiser). So, due to the possibility of alts, I refuse to go to masters/mistresses when there is a problem, especially when it’s against the land covenant and LL TOS.
@Eclectic:
1) I need to speak to my landlady about that since I know that my last landlord was a stickler about orbs.
2) I’ve noticed. I’ve since gone through and restricted privacy even further on all my accounts, private and public (i.e. rl and sl related accounts).
3) I’ll need to look into that, it sounds helpful for my photography since I do a lot of on-site shoots.
4) She actually IMed me earlier today, much to my surprise, so once I get used to 2.1, I’ll mute her. I can’t even find my own picks let alone mute someone at the moment.
@Nimil: I will certainly need to look into those! I love the hippo systems, used them for my store and my club. And yes, it’s a very creepy story. lol That’s why I shared it with you all. Yes, I read that when my IM was rejected, which is why I resorted to a return e-mail.
lol omg is this serious? i didnt find this creepy, i found that rather funny…
How did she got there u asked? is that a serious question? u can turn off fly all u want… there are tools or u can even turn on fly everywhere in the emerald viewer… there are radars too where u can see people… or u just look on the map and go there…
if u dont want ppl on your land then do a list or get a security system…
the email thing was weird but the rest…
im in SL to talk to people so i dont care if they drop in.
theres a security system on xstreet..its called SWA Mistress MKVI..it was about 1k I think and no copy..but its really good if you learn how to set it up..it can restrict levels of where people can go…like they cant fly up over 500m etc..or you can block them into a certain area (great for skybox stores on land that you live and dont want ppl snooping)..I bought but have been too lazy to set it up yet..thankfully I havent had any people in my skybox..if I do you’ll be sure I’ll set up mistress..