Outrageous Harassment: Griefers Scramble Police To SL Resident’s RL Home!!!

by Alphaville Herald on 28/07/08 at 9:56 pm

When will the FBI get involved?

by Stoli Babbage, staff reporter

“Swatting”, is a term for a technology-enabled real life attack in which the perpetrator calls the victim’s local police department in hysterics to convince the 911 emergency operators the victim is in a hostage situation — or going on a shooting rampage. By making it appear the call originated from the victim’s phone number, a successful attack results in real life adrenaline-hyped gun-wielding SWAT teams being dispatched to the victim’s home, with dangerously unpredictable results. This is what passes for “lulz” or “fun” after playing the game too long and going snow-blind to virtuality/reality.

For several months, rumors have been circulating that the notorious Patriotic Nigras (PN) griefers were responsible for swatting several of their most outspoken opponents, including Second Life Furnation admin Corsi Mousehold. Until now, those rumors were unconfirmed. However, in recent interviews, Corsi Mousehold has stepped forward to confirm that the rumors are true.

Corsi Mousehold is the owner of “Corsi’s Creations” in Gar, and Furnation – a furry sim (anthropomorphic animal role play area). Both the business and the Second Life sims have been under repeated attack by PN members over the last year – part of an escalating round of game-based virtual violence — although Mousehold tells us that since the Linden Lab Governance Team has begun to step up, the attacks have died down. According to Corsi, “The PN might last a couple minutes in-world before being banned, if that, so we’ve seen a huge decline in griefing”.

Unfortunately, it appears that now that the PN griefing is ineffective in-game, they have graduated to targeting their victims in real life. As Cosri told us, “They actually tried to swat me twice. The second time the police were still standing here from the first.”

According to Corsi, even after the police leave, the harassment is not over. “I was sent loads of pizzas repeatedly one day. I had to call a lot of my local pizza delivery places to let them know that fraudulent orders were being made on my behalf.

And so it appears that PN activities have shifted from content theft, sim crashing, IM spamming, self-replicated object attacks, and Second Life grid crashing, to a new level: defacing deviant art accounts, DDoS attacks on furry websites such as furrum.com, harassing victims with repetitive pizza deliveries, and swatting.

Sources suggesting that the PN have attempted to perpetrate at least one other swatting. An anonymous source submitted a recording http://www.mediafire.com/?xbtxwjnzmxf originally found on a PN website — 915chan.org. The recording appears to be a failed attempt at a swatting conducted in Australia, targeting an individual calling himself Aush0k. Details are sketchy, but it appears that the swatting was in retaliation for DDoS attacks against the PN website that Aush0k supposedly was responsible for.

Looking at the big picture, it appears that for the time being, the PN have gotten away with these swattings. It is also rumored that Kalel Venkman, of the JLU was targeted but we were unable to confirm those reports. Usually reliable sources tell us the PN membership has shrunk considerably in recent months, but it is apparent that their activities continue to escalate without regard to the potential for real life harm. At what point does this stop being a game?

Swatting puts real people in real danger and goes far beyond what is even faintly appropriate for “the lulz” or any sort of payback for real or imagined slights in the virtual realm. We have to wonder when the FBI will step in.