| The following notes were taken from: |
Table of Contents |
Meeting Purpose
- The Trust and Safety User Group is to provide a forum to discuss topics relating to safety and security in Second Life. However, please note that for matters of privacy and personal safety, the following will not be openly discussed by members of the team:
- Reports of abuse, together with the outcome of investigations or actions taken in response; specific account information (including terminations, suspensions, warnings, etc.); DCMA or copyright issues; internal processes; ToS interpretations.
- The meetings:
- Are held on the 3rd Tuesday of the month, at 11:00 SLT.
- Take place at the Linden Estate Services meeting place.
- Are a mix of Voice and text chat.
- Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.
- For descriptions on all SL user groups and their purpose please refer to SL Official User Groups.
Trust and Safety Blog Posts Blog Posts
- The Second Life Trust and Safety team shares regular community blog posts to help keep the community informed and educated on various topics. These blogs cover topics such as maintaining strong account security practices, tips and tricks, and helpful how-to guides.
- All posts can be found within the Trust and Safety Tuesdays section of the Community blogs and are now tagged as such.
- Those who wish to receive the updates via e-mail can hit the Follow button on the page.
- Going forward, Trust and Safety blog posts will be made on every second Tuesday of the month (i.e. the week before the Trust and Safety User Group meetings).
Updates from the Team
- Since the previous meeting, the number of phishing attempts within Groups and IMs appears to have decreased. This is put down to:
- Greater awareness among users, thanks to word-of-mouth and the Lab’s Phishing blog post.
- Work the Lab has put into implementing measures on the back-end to more readily address the issue.
- However, dealing with the problem is still viewed as an on-going effort, including addressing other areas of attempted scamming.
- To further help combat phishing, it has been suggested that the use of a logo icon with official SL links is extended to include 3rd party sites where there is an established SL presence / use (e.g. Primfeed, Flickr, Gyazo) so that genuine links to these sites can be easily identified when appearing in chat, IMs. etc., and – if possible – in embedded links (those using [] to display them as a word rather than a URL).
- There will be blog posts in the future focused on Abuse Reports – how and when to file, and what information is helpful.
- There is also my own Abuse Reports tutorial, which has been submitted for further review by the T&S team (given it is now seven years old), and has been found to still correctly reflect the process of filing an AR.
Abuse Reports
- There is a backlog of Abuse Reports that are being addressed.
- However, incoming reports do still get reviewed for prioritisation. Every effort is made to address all ARs in a timely manner wherever possible.
- In terms of disclosure of personal information – raised at the meeting – it was acknowledged that these can take time to resolve, due to the need to carry out a full investigation and make sure the situation is fully understood and the correct action taken (see below as well).
- Offensive / hate-related graphics and symbols seen in-world should be subject to Abuse Report filing (with images of the items, if possible).
- Land encroachment issues (particularly on Mainland) should be AR’d if they cannot be addressed through contact with the owner of the encroaching object(s).
- A question was asked about Abuse Report categories and LL providing more information on them.
- Currently, I have a breakdown based on information provided by the Governance team (part of Trust and Safety) – see: Abuse Report Category notes.
- A reminder was given that while it may not appear that an Abuse Report appears to result in “no action”, this may not necessarily be the case: it is possible that the issue is still under investigation; or that action has been taken, but not in the manner anticipated when filing the AR; or that investigation failed to produce sufficient cause/ evidence for action to be taken; or (at the current point in time) the report is caught in the backlog
- Even if previous ARs relating to a situation or individual, etc., appear to have resulted in “no action” filing further reports where the actions are repeated is worthwhile as they help T&S built up a pattern of behaviour which can be applied to investigations / actions taken.
- Note that telephone support staff cannot assist with filed Abuse Reports, as they do not have access to the information, nor are they in a position to file an Abuse Reports on a user’s behalf.
Marketplace Reports
- These are dealt with by Trust and Safety.
- It is acknowledged that there are issues with MP reporting – lack of categories, mis-matching between categories and flags, etc.
- T&S is working with the Web Team to try to improve this, and it is possible that Melody Linden from T&S could attend the Web User Group meetings to discuss there.
Disclosure of Personal Information
- This is definitely against the ToS / Community Standards and should be AR’d.
- HOWEVER it also requires forethought from users: whilst there is a “1st Life” tab in the Profile floater (which would perhaps be better relabelled to something like “Further Information” or similar and carry a warning about disclosure), people should take care as to what they place within that tab and be mindful not to put anything which might be used as personally identifying (or indeed, anywhere else in their Profile.
- Where such disclosure goes beyond Second Life and presents the potential for harm, additional doxing, etc.), the matter should additionally be reported to local law enforcement.
- Personal Data disclosure with external tools:
- It was noted that there is a growing use of AI tools in relation to Second Life for the production of images, etc.
- Whilst LL has no jurisdiction over such tools, a reminder was given that those using them should take the time to read any related terms of service, etc., particularly in regards to collection and re-use of personal information / personally identifying information.
General Discussion
- A question was (again) asked on what is allowed within region maturity ratings – the clearest answer is via the Maturity Ratings guide. There is also the Adult Content FAQ.
- There was a discussion on security orb timings, covenants and breaking covenants. This can be a complex subject (e.g. estate – Private and Mainland) operating covenants which specify how systems systems should be used (contact estate owner); Mainland areas managed directly by LL (e.g. Bellisseria) – raise an AR if the security owner refuses to address covenant violation; security systems that encroach public spaces / rights of way (e.g. waterways and roadways) – AR, etc.
- The question was asked whether T&S work with third-party sites closely associated with Second Life (e.g. Primfeed), to address ToS violations. In sort: LL have no direct jurisdiction over such sites, and the likes of Primfeed tend to be very well moderated anyway.
- However, if a post on Primfeed, Flickr, etc., includes an image directly related to something viewable in-world which is against the ToS / Community Standards, then this can be subject to an AR, especially if an identifying location / avatar name can be supplied as a part of the AR.
- Requests have been made for increased moderation on SL’s Discord channels to deal with spamming, attempted scams, etc. One suggestion is for LL to deploy a honeypot bot to help address these issues.
- Use of bots / scripted agents / traffic gaming came up:
- Traffic gaming can be reported via AR.
- Bots not registered as scripted agents can be AR’d.
- As it was noted that it is not always easy to tell an “unregistered” bot from a properly recorded scripted agent, therefore it would be useful to add a field to the agent profile indicating it has been properly tagged as a scripted agent, making identification instantly possible.
- The latter point has been previously raised as a Feature Request, currently being tracked by LL.
- Policy for reference: Scripted Agent Policy.
- The subject of linking alt accounts to a main account was again raised “to allow blocking in bulk”.
- This could be a privacy issue. For example: I might want to have an alt for a specific legitimate purpose in SL (role-play, research) or for business use, etc., and I do not wish to have that account directly associated with my “main” account.
- Alt linking resulted in one of the most drama-laden situations in Second Life in the early 2010s with the user-created Red Zone “alt linking” system.
- Obviously, LL have the means to link accounts for investigative purposes.
Next Meeting
- 13:00 SLT, Friday, August 18, 2026, at the Linden Estate Services.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 