Abuse Reports: What You Wanted to Know – 2018-09

Abuse Reports are a thing in Second Life™. But, not a lot is known about them. The typical Second Life user (resident) files them, gets an email saying we got your report, and that is about all they know. Thanks to privacy laws that is about all the Lab can tell us. What happens to the report or how an issue is resolved is a mystery to most residents.

We ‘old timers’ can tell the noobs, cranky, manipulative, haters, and the simple by their thinking and comments about how Abuse Reports are handled. Those groups are not mutually exclusive.

Kristin Linden is the supervisor of the five-person Governance Team. These are the people that read the Abuse Reports, check the evidence, and decide on what action is to be taken. They also moderate the SL Forum.

This last Tuesday (9/18) Kristin facilitated a meeting with the team and Second Life residents. I caught it on video. It is your opportunity to see-hear a discussion with the ENFORCERS…

I often make an index to the videos I post. I am not into that today. So, the most you’ll get is a summary.

The abuse team is about 5 people. Kristin describes it as five-ish, suggesting the number changes from time to time.

How many Abuse Reports are filed per day? Kristin didn’t have a number. Her estimate is about a 1,000 per week. It varies with what is happening in SL.

That gives each team member about 40 per day as they apparently have a basic five-day week. Assuming an eight-hour day, that is like 12 minutes per report as an average. Kristin pointed out some reports, like harassment, take more time as they figure out what is being done, how it is being done, and how much of it is being done. Others are clear cut obvious and require little investigation.

They do prioritize the reports. Region crashing is at the top of the list. Followed by griefing and other categories of issues. Reports are sorted by age, oldest first. Harassment, griefing, and age play reports are typically handled ahead of other reports.

There is a report category labeled Gaming Violation. That is for SKILL Gaming violations. But, it is getting used as a general SL game violation…

While all reports are looked at not all can be acted on. Some are so incomplete they really have no idea what is being reported. Others are so old the logs and other evidence is gone. Some are amazingly trivial. Kristin’s example was, ‘I got peed on…’.

Phishing and fraud are referred to the Fraud Team. So, account hacks are not for Abuse Reports. While reporting someone making phishing attacks… attempts… is appropriate for an Abuse Report, once you have bitten, it moves over to fraud. For the quickest action, report to the right people.

When reporting something happening in a region other than the one you are in, make that clear in the report. The Abuse Report system automatically includes a SLURL of where you are when reporting.

More… page links below.

3 thoughts on “Abuse Reports: What You Wanted to Know – 2018-09

  1. Darkmoon Creations – DMC were reported at least 9 years ago. Complaints have been made since then, that the store/s have been deliberately defrauding customers in some cases for over $100USD a time and as far as I can tell NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE ABOUT IT.

    Darkmoon Creations has several inworld businesses, including a couple re-selling dances. They have lots of dance packs for sale and when you buy one – nothing is delivered. The published Customer Service process is a dead end too, with no response.

    The owner, sometimes via an alt, is online regularly. They appear to be monitoring online activity, while offline. They come online to ban people regularly. Additionally, the owner is a member of several groups and one of them shows their roster……along with last login and the DMC owner is online every few weeks.

    I did check. But it appears a higher total amount would be required to engage the FBI to investigate the fraud complaint, even though, there appears enough for the German gentleman who owns DMC to be earning quite a good RL living from it. Perhaps, a little adverse publicity might do the trick.

    If repeated acts of fraud are reported to LL over almost a decade and nothing is done, then the whole process is a joke. If I had a choice, I would no longer be in Second life, no longer leasing a region and spending several thousand USD per year, there. As it is, I no longer spend as much, and limit myself to those stores I have had a good relationship with in the past.

    I used to get into the police blotters many years ago, because I refused to put up with rudeness from others, who then found how eloquent I could be with my put-downs. Linden Labs has played at abuse and enforcing behavior. But it can not and should not be taken seriously.

    • There are two Darkmoon stores in the marketplace. One is empty the other has products and has been around since 2014. There are two similarly named avatars; LilithDarkmoon1181 and Darkmoon Lilliehook. There is a wholes string of people with Darkmoon in their name.

      Visiting the marketplace I find the Darkmoon’s have dissimilar products.

      In world, I find no presence of one and a region owned by the other. The later is full of various products.

      I can try out numerous demos of the products. If one has gone to the trouble of building a demo, there would be no reason to sell it as an empty box. One could make more money selling a product and generating customers for repeat sales.

      As I looked through the world and and various Darkmoon and DMC products it looked like there are 3 maybe 4 people with similar names and dissimilar products. One has products that have a very unusual use/rez requirements. I know some would never read the instructions and would probably think they got an empty box.

      There may have been a Darkmoon selling empty boxes for L$25,000. But, I can’t find them.

      The point is, if the seller is still around and selling it is because the Abuse Reports are so vague the Lindens can’t identify the seller with any certainty. I certainly have had trouble trying to find them. Otherwise if well defined as to who it was and I can’t find them then they were removed. Either way the state of things seems to support the narrative in the video.

      • Apologies for the confusion. I wasn’t looking for help. I was simply stating a case. I am not looking for reparation for myself -that is long gone. I am looking for this known ongoing fraud to be stopped and for abuse report processes to mean something.

        The name to look for inworld is DarkMoon Lilliehook, last online August 26th. In RL, they appear to be known as Carsten Lilienbecker and I have addresses and phone numbers – if I was to trust the information.

        The specific store is DMC DarkMoonCreations 2 (37, 65, 64) – If you arrive somewhere, where there are 258/300 people banned, you are probably in the right place. Lots of people got banned, pissed at being screwed over.

        Here is some of the original details I supplied in my report. If this wasn’t enough I, as a 30+ year veteran software engineer, would have ASKED FOR MORE.

        On 12/29/15, at DMC ‘s Intan Couple Dance Balls, Couple Dances, Packs & more (0822cc65-a127-e903-11b8-7e72360ad11d), I ordered “3fx Club Design Dance Pack v3 – Intan Ready”.

        However., the delivery failed. I raised a ticket (#558953) at the website – http://darkmoon-creations.com/support/tickets.php

        Transaction History: Date / time ID prefix Detail Debit Credit Ending Balance 2015-12-29 20:23:13 f31e88b8 Destination: DarkMoon Lilliehook
        Payment
        Region: Hento Nine
        Description: 3fx Club Design Dance Pack v3 – Intan Ready L$3999 L$1078

        My chatlog at that time was as followed :
        [20:23] 3fx Club Design Dance Pack v3 – Intan Ready whispers: Thanks. Product coming shortly. Any problems, contact DarkMoon Lilliehook for help.
        [20:23] DMCvend Server 3FX IR + DP v2.5: Sorry, but the product is temporarily out of stock. Please contact the merchant (DarkMoon Lilliehook) who will be able to help you.

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