Kid avatars and fake virtual identities

Imagine someone sends you a link to a picture. You click on it and see a porn scene, depicting an avatar that looks very much like you, engaged in a sex act with another lookalike. You know you did not do what the scene is showing, but the picture looks very, very authentic. Names, group tags, your clothes, avatar shapes, the walls in the background: Everything looks right. Except for the big wiener your lookalike avatar is wearing, because you know you don’t have an attachment like this, and you know you never do the whole avatar-humping-thing. But there it is: A photo that seems to show your avatar having sex.

This is exactly what happened to me yesterday.

It could be seen as a prank, something to have a good laugh at – if I were not a kid avatar and the owner of a popular region for kid avatars. Because I am, the picture has the potential to get my region closed down and my account banned. At the very least it can seriously damage my reputation with Linden Lab and the SL community.

The picture looks so convincing, I would find it difficult to believe it’s a fake – if my avatar shape and name tag were not in it.

The person who sent me the link visited my region yesterday with another guy. They both explored the sim for a while while talking on voice chat. Then they confronted me about what they perceive as a violation of Second Life’s Terms of Service: Me being a kid avatar. I explained to them – patiently – that merely using a kid avatar is not a violation of the TOS, and that nudity and sex are strictly forbidden in my region and other places the kid avatar community uses. After a while the two visitors claimed they have a picture and also videos of me being naked and having sex. I told them that’s impossible. Then they sent me a link to the picture I described.

I am used to being threatened by kid avatar haters. But seeing myself in a staged porn scene was very upsetting. I contacted Linden Lab, the Second Life Children group and my friends. We analysed the picture. It does not seem to be photoshopped. So how did they do it? So far I do not have any proof for the picture being a fake. Here is what I think they did: They copybotted avatar shapes, clothes and buildings in my region. They rebuilt a room, probably on an OpenSim grid or an OpenSim standalone server. They registered OpenSim accounts in my name and the name of the other person shown in the picture. They registered groups and set up the group tags. Then they took the compromising picture.

That’s a lot of hassle just to ruin a guy’s reputation or the reputation of a community. But if you’re good with copybot and OpenSim, you can do it in a day. Since copybotting is a violation of the TOS, and slander as well as the virtual depiction of sex with minors is against the law in most countries, I am now thinking about the legal steps to take.

The visitors on my sim also talked about videos they’d have. So we can probably expect more faked material showing lewd scenes with kid avatar lookalikes to pop up. I can not be sure whether this is a campaign against the region I am running, against the kid avatar community or against me personally. Clearly it shows that with todays technology it has become very easy to fake virtual world identities. Take care.

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