Add a rule against signing up users to "subscription" marketing messages without their consent.
tracked
Abyss Monster
Like many other users, I periodically get spam notecards and IMs from SL business owners advertising their new products. I have NEVER signed up to any notecard mailing list, I have always been added automatically without my knowledge.
There's already a feedback post here about the ability to block these objects: https://feedback.secondlife.com/feature-requests/p/blocking-an-avatar-should-also-block-blacklist-all-of-their-rezzed-objects however I think that is only a band-aid solution.
Signing users up onto your "subscription" service without their consent should not be allowed in the first place. It falls under spam, yet every time I have submitted a report against these objects, & explained in the report that they are spamming me (and others) without my consent and sometimes without a way to opt out, nothing seems to come of it. So I can only assume that, currently, this isn't against the SL TOS, or for some reason the reports are falling on deaf ears.
Every time this has happened to me, the ads I get are from a brand that I don't recognize. This is because every time this happens it's nearly always happens one of two ways:
- I was added to the mailing list because I bought ONE item from the store in question; often a long time ago, sometimes years or more, from the Marketplace. This implies that the store owner is manually adding all Marketplace customer usernames to a mailing list or automating the process somehow.
- I visited the sim one time, and my mere presence was enough to get me on their mailing list.
I need to stress that not only do these users add you to lists extremely easily, but they often make unsubscribing very difficult. At best, it'll be through a system like "KioskNet" - which at least has an inworld location you can go and get a HUD from, and unsubscribe from any mailing lists using that system.
But if they use their own system, you're often out of luck. Some tell you "unsubscribe in the mainstore" but when you go there, there's no unsubscribe button, no matter how you look. Others say "contact me to unsubscribe", meaning that you have to actually talk to the person to convince them to take you off.
And even if you find a way to unsubscribe, some will automatically put you back on their list later! I periodically check the KioskNet thing because every 6 months or so, a store has added me back as a "subscriber."
As the other thread on this issue says, though, blocking either the user or their mailing object usually doesn't work because they tend to rezz multiple copies of the object, and keep going. Once you're in their system, you will be contacted by any object they rez going forward.
I ask that Linden Labs considering making these unprompted spam subscriptions disallowed on the platform, and actually punishable. You should ONLY be able to get a "subscription" by opting in. Intrusive ads we did not ask for are spammy, disruptive, and extremely annoying.
Log In
SL Feedback
Merged in a post from Monroe Ghost:
Title: Aggresive gaming sims need controlling
Details: I have an alt that stay on one gaming sim. That alt logs in there, plays the games, speaks to no one and logs out.
Other random gaming sims send free credits in order to get my custom , not only to that account but to all my accounts , even the ones that never go gaming. I have to then contact the owners to ask them to stop. One said they had no idea how to do that! Some have stopped but really its not my job to opt out where I should never have been opted in in the first place. Some places have a board to click to opt out, some dont but yet again I shouldnt have to go anywhere unless I choose to
I can block of course and do but I still get messages to mail. I dont want to lose that feature as its important to me so Im still bombarded with spam from these sites
LL if you cant stop them then please insist every site has an opt out. That is ofc only second best as I mentioned but its a start.
This is a very annoying situation and its impacting on my enjoyment in SL. Im paying $99 a year to be hassled!
SL Feedback
Merged in a post from Prisqua Newall:
Title: Opting-Out Shouldn’t Be a Treasure Hunt
Details: I’d like to raise an issue about in-world spam and the lack of any straightforward way to remove our names from creator mailing lists. Right now, if we buy a product once, some creators treat that single purchase as permission to send every future update, release note, or promo message. That isn’t consent. It’s just sloppy practice.
There needs to be a stronger, explicit policy in the TOS: buying an item should not automatically enrol residents into a marketing list. If someone wants updates, they should opt in. If they don’t, creators shouldn’t get to assume perpetual access to their IMs.
Residents also shouldn’t have to play detective just to figure out how to get off these lists. Hunting through vendor profiles, notecards, or scripts to find an “unsubscribe” option is unreasonable, and blocking the avatar doesn’t even stop the messages.
Spam is not “customer service.” It’s not “community building.” It’s just spam. And creators who still believe a single purchase entitles them to message people indefinitely need to offer a simple opt-out, visible and functional.
We need both stronger rules and better enforcement so that residents have a real choice in what they receive and from whom.
Riannah Avora
Subscription systems are way out of control. I repeatedly get added to Subscriptions that I have never subscribed to. I don't even know who the people are in most cases. And often, I get readded to ones that I have specifically requested to be removed from or that I have successfully Unsubscribed from.
When I go to the location for the object sending the subscription to Unsubscribe, the Unsubscriber object is located in an area that I can't access in order to click it to unsubscribe. This is intentional. Most often, the owner has picked up the system all together making it totally impossible to Unsubscribe. Again, this is intentional.
Either way, it makes it impossible to remove yourself from them. And to further the issue, the owner will immediately logout of SL after sending the subscription message so they can say that they never got your request to be removed. If you should actually catch them online, they get a real attitude when you ask to be removed. So much so, I fear retaliation in some cases.
This is really insane and extremely annoying. We have the ability to block Group Notices and/or Group Chat when it becomes overwhelming, but there is no current mechanism in place to manage the subscription systems. I have had to block so many people because of this problem already and I fear I will have to block 1/2 of SL.
Please give us a way to completely remove ourselves from the subscriptions that we don't want to be subscribed to. People shouldn't automatically be added to these systems without consent in the first place. And there should ALWAYS be an accessible way to Unsubscribe available.
Thank you for your consideration in this matter.
Daemonika Nightfire
Hello,
I would like to report an ongoing issue with unsolicited subscriber systems in Second Life.
In many cases, simply trying a demo, purchasing a special offer (either inworld or on the Marketplace), or even just walking past a shop results in my userKey being captured and automatically added to a subscriber list without my consent.
Many merchants who use such systems do not respond to IMs and ignore requests to be removed from their lists. In some cases, I had to contact the same merchant several times without success. Even worse, certain shops require residents to locate a hidden unsubscribe sign, and in the past, systems such as Hippo-Vend even forced users to create a separate account in order to unsubscribe.
In my opinion, this practice constitutes unsolicited spam and should not be tolerated. I therefore strongly suggest stricter action against such subscriber systems. For this reason, I have started filing an Abuse Report for every unsolicited subscriber message, so that Linden Lab can see how frequently residents are being affected by this issue.
I would like to emphasize that I have never joined any subscriber system voluntarily, and I never will. All subscriptions happen without my consent.
Gwyneth Llewelyn
I totally agree, and more than that: all countries having some sort of privacy laws
must
implement opt-in solutions for all
their equivalent of a "mailing list" (which is exactly what these "subscription" systems are). This is obviously true in the EU with the GDPR, but the UK and Brazil have very similar laws in place, as well as the Great State of California, to name the few that I know that use very similar wording in their data protection laws.Which means that this "automatic subscription service" violates local laws for a
lot
of residents, and even if such provisions are not explicitly
mentioned in the ToS, at least on all countries with civil law (as opposed to Anglo-Saxon-inspired common law), national laws override any "lack" of explicit rules on a ToS — that is, a company cannot impose on its customers a weaker or crippled enforcement of national laws.I'm aware that this is not 100% true for the US (at least not as a whole) and that acknowledgement of the applicable laws is mostly required in contracts and ToS, since the default provision is "everything is allowed unless explicitly forbidden". That means that one
might
argue that "automatic subscription services", so long as they don't explicitly violate other
rules (say, an automatic subscription system that spams residents with hate speech, or incite residents to disturbance of events held by others, etc., to give a few examples), are allowed on those places on Earth where no law forbids that.The trouble in this case is that obviously LL is allowed (under US law!) to set forth all the rules they want, so long as no local laws are violated, of course. This also means that they're technically not
required
to comply with any other laws but those that apply to their own jurisdiction (in San Francisco).Gwyneth Llewelyn
But on the other hand, countries are sovereign, and can refuse service to be provided (especially
paid
services!) if local laws are disregarded. This would effectively block a substantial part of the whole world from accessing the SL Grid (as well up to a sixth or fifth of the US population — California just happens to be the most populated state in the US).And this is exactly what
can
happen if, say, a German lawyer (Germany has even stricter privacy laws than the average European country) brings the matter to the attention of the local judiciary. They might be nice and just give LL ample warning to comply or face getting banned from Germany's networking infrastructure. Or they might be so angry that they just turn off the tap to their Internet pipes, and just inform LL a posteriori
.Nobody wants that to happen, so all the ToS needs to do is to acknowledge that the legal provisions on the many jurisdictions in the world may grant additional protections and guarantees, and that LL
will
comply with such legislation — by telling their Support/Concierge team to address outstanding abuse reports when such occur in this specific situation.It's not a big change. It's just flipping a switch on the backoffice of their diligent support techs, so that they understand why they have to consider such abuse reports worthy of notice, and what to do to follow-up on this scenario.
Spooky Pumpkins
My suggestion of having objects owned by a blocked avatar be automatically blocked as well was more coming from a place of "this can be used maliciously"
I see it as an extremely dangerous loophole that can easily be exploited in a real stalking situation, or harassment. Say you block a resident for whatever reason....but they won't let it go, they start sending you local chat messages with a "subscriber" object which can just keep messaging you in local, even though you have it blocked, you still get the local chat message.
I completely agree that there should be preventions in place to keep this from happening without consent, but actual safety concerns would be alleviated by being able to block all communications from objects owned by blocked avatars.
Kyle Linden
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tracked
HollyKrampus Resident
I am loathing a certain tactic that to open my purchase I have to agree to subscribe to get it.
That and finding I'm subscribed to things I haven't. Bellatech for one
Kallee Vyper
Yes. We def need this. I get subscribo messages from stores I never signed up for and honestly, don’t know how to stop them. It’s annoying and needs to stop. I know a lot of other ppl complain about this too. It’s been many a discussion on fb. LL def needs to stop this.
Noadreams Resident
There are also unpacking objects that to proceed you are forced to agree to subscribe to get the item unpacked. I should subscribe because I wish too & not underhandly done so.
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