Handy Hints for You and Your Property

SINCE GRIEFING seems to be the number one past time of pesky little pubescent twerps, here are some handy hints to ensure the rest of get to use our time more creatively and pleasantly this weekend.PERSONAL:1. Get yourself a personal protection device. Rather than me recommend one, ask people you know what they use. Mysti Tool is one I’ve heard a lot of people talk about. (We will be running a story on personal security gadgets by R..J. Dumart in a future edition).2. A personal bug device is also useful if you want to know if someone is bugging you or your property to listen in on your private conversations. I believe Oblijan Proost makes one of these. 3. There are also radar devices so you can see who is in your area. One I’ve been told about is Crystal Babeli radar.4. Do not accept anything - objects particularly - from anyone you don’t know. (Anything which can contain a script is particularly dangerous).5. Under Edit - Preferences, make sure you select 'Log Conversations and IMs' - this way you will have a record of who said what in case of a dispute.6. If you are being personally attacked, SIT DOWN on an object (you can’t be pushed if you are sitting down) and write down the name of your attacker and the location. 7. There are personal protection services about but of the several I contacted for information, Mustafaaab Connoisseur of Defender Servants of THE FORCE was the most helpful. (He offered the above advice of sitting down).8. If you are being pestered by noise, mute the origin of that noise ot turn your sound off.9. Change your password often and use a combination of letters and numbers to give it a high security rating.10. Make sure that the ATMs you use in SL are real and that you trust the company that is behind them. PROPERTY:1. You can protect things in your inventory by storing them in something like Toneless Tomba’s ‘Inventory Box Organiser’, but there are sure to be others out there. This also means you can store items outside your inventory. (Be careful with 'no copy' items though).(Reducing the number of items in your inventory is good because keeping it under 4,000 items reduces inventory loss.2. Don’t invite just anybody in your land group. Make sure you know who they are - them having an account with SL goes part of this way.3. When you place an object on your land, make sure it is not set at ‘For Sale’. (Electric Sheep has a new system which ‘scrapes’ everything in Second Life and ‘advertises’ objects that are for sale (even that new lounge chair you rezzed in your own home). 4. Make sure that you don’t allow any public building or objects to be rezzed on your land, by anyone other than yourself or people you trust.5. If you REALLY want to make sure your home is safe from intrusion, make it inaccessible to anyone who does not have any payment information available on their profile6. Land owners can join www.slbanlink.com if they want to join up with other landowners who have banned people from their land. This organisation ensures that if you ban someone, other landowners will also be advised that this person has been a nuisance elsewhere.7. Rat Thing agent profiler, which is produced by Ng Security profiles avatar’s by age and payment info, so this goes some way to tracking troublesome avatars.This list of handy hints is by no means exhaustive or in order of priority, but it will go part of the way to making sure you and your property are protected as much as they can be in this 'Wild West' land of SL.In the course of doing some research for this article, I searched ‘security’ on Second Life and was surprised to see security groups offering to undertake “... black jobs that can’t be listed here” and “assassinations”! lolI couldn’t help but think this was the 21st Century version of ‘cowboys and indians’ or ‘cops and robbers’. Enjoy your weekend!

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