The Green Lanterns & Policing & Personal Safety within SL – Shaneos Howlett reporting.

We are taking a closer look at personal safety, griefing, policing within Second Life. Here is what you need to do should you be threatened by a griefer or your personal safety becomes in jeopardy.

First of all we answer the question ... What is a Griefer ?

A Griefer is a person or a group of people causing other people grief by becoming a nuisance ad causing drama.  These types can range from minor name calling and verbal abuse all the way up to SL and RL illegal activity including credit card fraud, identity theft, DOS attacks or Denial Of Service attacks.

Users should remember that they must follow the Linden Labs Terms of Service (TOS) these include ...

( For a full breakdown of the TOS you can visit http://lindenlab.com/tos#tos6)

When you begin your Second Life, you agree to abide by certain rules of conduct, including any applicable community standards for the portion of the Service you are using and other rules prohibiting illegal and other practices that Linden Lab deems harmful.

You will not post or transmit prohibited content, including any content that is illegal, harassing or violates any person's rights.

You agree that you will not post or transmit content or code that may be harmful, impede other users' functionality, invade other users' privacy, or surreptitiously or negatively impact any system or network.

   INFRINGEMENT NOTIFICATIONS

Second Life operates an intellectual property complaint process for complaints that User Content infringes another’s Intellectual Property Rights, the details of which are described below and, with respect to Second Life, in our Intellectual Property Policy.

They also include Intolerance

The use of derogatory or demeaning language or images in reference to another Resident's race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation is never allowed in Second Life. Harassment, Assault, Disturbing the Peace and Global Attacks are included in these rules.

How to Report a Griefer.

Residents should report violations of the Community Standards using the Abuse Reporter tool located under the Help menu in the in-world tool bar. LL reviews these abuse reports, and the identity of the reporter is kept strictly confidential.

Alternatively you can contact one of SL's educated / trained and experienced police groups for patrols and guidance in how to combat griefers some of these groups include The Green Lanterns.

What can  SL police groups do to help you ?

An experienced SL Police group can help to educate you on how to handle griefers and can assist in patrolling your area and help to file abuse reports – these groups are handy to have especially if you are off-line and unable to file an abuse report yourself or if you cannot patrol your entire area / sim and need assistance.

Help can be provided in the following ways ....

Guidance – Sim / Area guidance – how to setup your security settings to block new 1 day old users and thus blocking griefers.

·         How to add griefers to your area ban list.

·         How to file a abuse report via linden labs.

·         Patrol of the area and or sim to eliminate future griefing problems.

Using negotiation skills in talking to the griefers to try and stop their activities should be the first step before more higher policing tactics are used – like banning or blocking the individual or group in quesiton.

Policing Groups in SL

The Green Lanterns of Second Life

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/The%20Unknown%20Country/182/152/2023

(Based on the comic book action heroes, these residents provide a community watch service in Second Life and can be contacted should you need assistance.

You can contact the owner of the Green Lanterns – Hal Jordan for more information.

 Does the work that the Green Lanterns perform – are they actually beneficial ?

  Read this report for more info about the Green Lanterns of Second Life

http://thegreenlanterns.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/evidence-that-linden-lab-does-respond-to-abuse-reports/ 

The experienced police style groups of SL have special HUDS and objects available to them that can help to protect and assist the residents of SL – for security reasons the full abilities will not be explained within this report, but I can mention that one of the abilities of the groups are to find small objects that contain scripts that might be placed within an area or sim that may cause problems, these can then be located and eliminated quickly.

As you explore Second Life, be safe , aware and protect yourself. If you need assistance be sure to seek help from The Green Lanterns of Second Life and any other trustworthy groups against griefers. 

 Power in numbers will help you have a grief free experience.