Protect Your Land from Grief Attacks

For the second time, Desperation West was hit by a griefer with a self-replicating scripted object. The thing was a box with a picture from The Simpsons on it, and made copies of itself until it had filled up the properties of 6 or 7 paying residents. The person who commited the attack must have been on a spree, because his account was banned from Second Life by the time I logged on to fix the problem- but this actually presented a problem for me because it meant that I could not use the Second Life Region/Estate Tools to return his objects from my island. (When an account is banned, it will not show up in the resident chooser dialog, which means you can't use any features that require you to select a resident.) To prevent this sort of thing from happening again, I'd like to recommend that you protect your land by preventing random people from creating objects on it.

Create a Land Group

Land groups allow you to prevent unauthorized visitors from doing a bunch of things on your property while granting special priveliges to your trusted friends. Creating a group costs L$100, but they are Lindens well spent! To create a group, select Groups from the Edit menu, and then click Create in the group list dialog.


Really, the only thing you have to put in the Group Information window that comes up is your group's name. The group will automatically come with some reasonable default settings and roles for members. The group will be created (and you will be charged L$100) when you click OK.


Invite People to the Group

A land group must have at least two members (you and one other resident), or it will be automatically deleted within 3 days. Invite at least one other person to your group. Some people invite their alts. If you don't have any friends to invite at the moment, IM me and I will let you invite one of my alts so you can keep your group alive. To invite someone to your group:

1. Go to Edit > Groups to open up the group list dialog.
2. Select your new group from the list and then click Info.
3. Click the Members and Roles tab of the Group Information dialog and then click the Invite New Person button.
4. In the Group Invitation dialog, click Open Person Chooser.
5. In the Choose Resident dialog, you can either search for the name of the person to invite or, if the person is in your Friends list, you can choose their calling card from the list at the bottom of the window. Once you've selected the correct name, click Select to return to the Group Invitation window.
6. If you wish to invite multiple people at once, repeat steps 4 and 5 until all are selected.
7. At the bottom of the dialog you can choose what role to assign the new people. The Everyone role is sufficient if all you want to do is let group members build on your land. (I do not recommend inviting anyone but you alts as an Owner.) Click Send Invitations when you are finished.
8. Click OK to close the Group Information dialog.
   

Set Your Land to Group

You have to set your land to a group in order to restrict access to group members. This does not change who owns the land- it only determines who's able to do what on your property.

1. While standing on your property, go to World > About Land.
2. On the General tab, click the little Set button next to "Group."
3. In the group list that pops up, select your group and then click Select.
4. The Group property of the General tab should now list your group.

Restrict Build Access to your Group

1. In the About Land dialog, take a look at the Options tab.
   
2. To prevent unauthorized people from rezzing new items on your land, uncheck the All Residents box next to Create Objects.
   
3. To prevent people from moving existing objects onto your land (like vehicles), uncheck All Residents next to Object Entry.
4. Click OK.
   

Following these steps will keep your land beautiful and stop griefers in their tracks.