Info post: The Life Shop AO, debunked

It’s more than likely that in the past week or so you have seen, either in group chat or notecard sent out by group owners, an alert about the ‘Life Shop AO’. The alerts usually take the following alarmist format:

There have been some scripted attacks using the pretend “gift” tactic. Once you rez it if you have land rights you are in trouble, it can destroy your home, steal items, and take money from your account, it will turn you into a walking advert and dummy gift giver. The worst attacks required a sim rollback to fix, so please be careful….It’s called “Life Shop AO”

First of all, the important stuff: MOST OF THE CLAIMS IN THIS ‘WARNING’ ARE UNTRUE. Your home will not be destroyed, items will not be stolen from your inventory, and nor will money be taken from your account. The ‘worst attacks’ do not require a sim rollback to fix.

HOWEVER: one claim is true. It will turn the wearer into a walking advert and dummy gift giver, because there is a script inside this AO that, when worn, automatically spams everyone within chat range (20m) with a copy of itself. The wearer of the AO is completely unaware of this, until someone who has been spammed informs them of what’s happened.

A resident on the Second Life Official forums contacted Live Chat and spoke to Joppa Linden, who had the following to say on the matter:

Joppa: ok, false alarm. all this thing does is give out a Landmark, possible giving itself out as well.. but that’s it.
Toy_LaFollette: tyvm, may I quote that? :)
Joppa: surely ..it’s also an actual AO with animations in it
Toy_LaFollette: good news TY :)

Further information can be found at this post on the Official Forums. Please refrain from perpetuating the scare myths about this AO (which actually just contains the same old freebie animations we all know from Businesses in a Box and Full-Perm stores) and gently set people right when they pop up in group chat to holler about it. Also, please feel free to direct the unwitting wearers of this spam object to this post (and then send them to E. Watkins at Haddath to get a great, free AO instead!)