A common and widespread problem in Second Life is spam. There are various types of spam, but the most common is realized by creators who send information to their customers regarding their new products. However, some shops are more aggressive, and in some cases, merely visiting their store is enough to be added to a mailing list that sends periodic information about new releases. These two behaviors are often seen as annoying by customers. Being added to a mailing list without having requested it beforehand is particularly bothersome. Another aspect that makes this behavior unpleasant is the difficulty in unsubscribing easily.
However, it is not only shops that behave in this manner. In some cases, even simple event organizers such as DJs, club owners, art gallery owners, and the like send their invites to not only their friends’ list but also to people who have simply visited their venue. It is quite common for the systems used to send this spam to make it difficult to unsubscribe from the mailing list.
For this reason, I use a system called Allomancy, which allows users to unsubscribe directly from the local chat when I send a newsletter to those who have subscribed. The newsletter sends a message locally with a link that the recipient can click to unsubscribe. They do not need to go to my store to click on an unsubscribe button; it is sufficient to click directly in the local chat.
It would be desirable if all mailing list distribution systems had this unsubscribe system. So what should you do if you are inundated with spam and have to waste precious minutes closing all these messages and possibly even deleting another resident’s object? There are two main solutions: the first is to mute the person who is spamming, and the second is to blacklist the object that is sending the spam.
Each time a message is sent to us in Second Life, we are provided with two types of information: the sender and the name of the object that sent the message as well as its location. If we have authorized Linden Lab to communicate with us by email regarding activity in Second Life, the same information is sent to us by email. The solution I recommend is to go to the location where the object is and proceed to blacklist it.
Why do I recommend this solution? Simply because we will not have aggressively blocked the sender, but rather the object that sends the spam. However, in some cases, the person sending us spam is present on our friends list. For example, I sometimes receive an event invitation through a mailing list service, and even manually from the same friend on my contact list. In this case, I believe there is little to do but mute the person, of course, after removing them from our friends list. Alternatively, if we believe removing them from our friends list is sufficient, this could be a solution.
Another solution that is possible is simply to hide our online status, but this will not prevent our friends from sending us communications.
In conclusion, I believe that the problem of spam is indeed particularly bothersome for Second Life users, and the solutions to consider are mainly blocking the object that sends the spam by adding it to our Black List. At the end of this article, I will include all the useful references to proceed in this direction. Additionally, I will attach further information that may be useful regarding object rendering and changing an account if necessary.
References
Block and blacklist forum conversation
Firestorm: derendering and Blacklist
Firestorm: Muting/Blocking
Sign up for our newsletter now!
