They found out who she was in real life through a devious search of her Second Life avatar's name:

Years after the fact, the woman I'd profiled has stalkers who started harassing her in Second Life, and have taken their obsession to the wider Internet. "I actually have been threatened by a guy halfway across the world via Second Life," she tells me, "who said that he would 'destroy my life' by sending pictures of my avatar to my (RL) partner."

"I've come across certain people on SL who used a reverse image search on the pictures in your blog to find out my RL information," she told me, "so when possible, I'd like to make that a bit harder for them." (Not the images above, by the way.)

I recently received a fairly urgent e-mail from a young woman I profiled nearly a decade ago, who told me the post I had wrote about her had inadvertently caused considerable stress -- for herself, and potentially, for people close to her. The post was a mixed reality profile, containing a screenshot of her Second Life avatar alongside a photo of her in real life, and therein was the problem:

"In my case," she explained, "my avatar name is pretty unique. When you Google my avatar's name, your blog post is one of the first results. Next step: reverse image search the RL picture to find out the name (and other details, like e-mail or workplace) of the person via social media."

And she's been stalked this way, not just from Second Life to the wider web, but vice versa:

"I have been contacted on my private e-mail address by a person I didn't even know," she continued. "He said he saw my picture on a dating site and decided to reverse image search me (to check if I were real) and just contact me directly on my private/RL e-mail."

Emphasis mine, because WTF. And adding to that WTF, here's what her stalker told her, when she asked why he contacted her that way:

"'Because women don't tend to respond to messages on dating sites often.' After telling that person he was being extremely creepy and I didn't want to have contact with him," she says, "I made sure to block him from sending me any other messages."

And of course, she's been endangered in Second Life for equally creepy reasons: "It's very easy to piss off somebody on SL," she says. "This can happen when you say 'no' to sexual invitations, or people who are just jealous or think you have mistreated them. Next step for such a pathetic person is to try to find more information about you and either blackmail you or send chatlogs/pictures of your avatar or whatever to your friends, family or employer."

Fortunately, she goes on, "This never happened, because I told him I wasn't afraid or embarrassed about it. I don't think I have anything to hide." Still, she asked me to remove her mixed reality profile photos, for very good reasons, and I've done so. "I don't want my friends or relatives to have to deal with childlike behavior like this," she adds. "They have nothing to do with weird people on the internet that barely even know me on SL. So, for me that is a reason to make sure my SL info and my RL info are strictly separated wherever and whenever possible."

Her words are worth taking to heart, especially by other women, who are disproportionately stalked and harassed on the Internet. I'm taking her words to heart as well, because I've often written about the value of linking one's real life identity to one's avatar identity. I still think that should be an option for users, and valuable for many of them -- but sad to say, as we can see here, it's not practical or advisable in general.

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