Tux Winkler, the last member of the notorious Wrong Hands group to retain his original account, was deleted from Second Life at approximately 9:30 this morning, for egregious violations of the Second Life Term of Service . With the loss of their sims Red Square and Revolution, the power of the Wrong Hands over the good people of Second Life is broken.
The Wrong Hands was a group virtually synonymous with that of the now banned Woodbury University group. The group’s leader pro tem, Tux Winkler, was responsible for a spyware stalking network which targeted peacekeepers, but then broadened its scope to include anyone Tux Winkler didn’t happen to like.
The Wrong Hands group was also responsible for the theft of the Justice League Unlimited’s BrainiacWiki in January of 2010, a move originally touted as whistle-blowing, but their true griefer gang roots were exposed over time.
Activities of Woodbury University, an earlier related group called the Patriotic Nigras, and most recently The Wrong Hands have been strongly supported and sustained by Mark P. McCahill and Peter Ludlow of the Alphaville Herald, presumably to benefit their own academic work studying something they call “Hacktivism”.
The last remaining Wrong Hands base was located in Second Life in the southwest corner of the region known as Superville. Built and maintained by Tux Winkler, remained in place for a few hours, but by late afternoon was wiped clean and placed back into the pool of Linden owned property for resale.
On his blog, Winkler claims to have simply shut down his account abruptly and without warning; however, all his known alts are also missing from search, as well as one of the accounts of his wife Tuxette Magic (other of her alts remain untouched). The scripts used in his spyware stalking system have also been blacklisted and cannot be redeployed, effectively killing the system.
The action against Winkler was taken by the Lindens who disassembled some of his devices, verified what they did and how they worked and who Winkler was tracking, and based the ban on their findings.
Winkler is now a fugitive and unwelcome in Second Life. Merely logging on for him is now a ToS violation. The public is advised to remain vigilant, and report any sightings of Tux Winkler alternate accounts to the Lindens via abuse reporting.
Update: April 3, 2012
The region Nope in Second Life, established October 22 of 2011 and used exclusively by the fugitive Wrong Hands cybergang, went permanently offline approximately three weeks ago as of this date. The Wrong Hands group itself appears missing as well. This indicates a corrective action by Linden Lab. The online community within Second Life is urged to report Wrong Hands members to Linden Lab admins via abuse reports whenever they are encountered.
It is rumored that Tux Winkler, long time Second Life troll and key figure in The Wrong Hands, has been placed under house arrest in his home in England back in February of 2012 for hacking into, and defacing, various web sites unrelated to the Second Life MMO service. While this could not be readily confirmed, Winkler did completely vanish from Second Life so far as anyone has been able to determine, and his web sites and pages on various social media have been altered to cover his tracks, or completely removed. In the meantime, still obsessed with trying to paint themselves as popular heroes, the Wrong Hands has been busy creating an extensive disinformation campaign, posting what can only be termed a very creative version of actual events on various third party web sites, whitewashing their break-ins, stalking and theft as being somehow justifiable.
Links
- SCIFI.radio – Woodbury Banned a Third Time, SL Bronies Take A Hit
- SCIFI.radio – The Wrong Hands, Lies Exposed
- SCIFI.radio – The Wrong Hands Spies On You
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SCIFI.radio – Woodbury University Sneaks Back Into Second Life
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I overheard this yesterday evening and thought it appropriate to share here:
“When the shoe fits, wear it on the Wrong Hand”
UPDATE:
A few notable names that seem to have vanished along side Tux;
Tizzers Foxchase (tizzyfits resident)
Griffer Zero
My Vendetta
Alexy Romanov
Dicking Highwater
The TWH gathering hub has been officially scrubbed and the land reclaimed by Governor Linden.
Tux Winkler once swore he would ‘be here till they switched off the lights”
I have this to say….
“Lights out, Tux”
Utopian Ghost is also missing from search and it is reported by those “in the know” that this happened in sync with the Tux Winkler termination. Utopian Ghost and Crafty Waxen were staples on the Revolution sim; presumably sharing some degree of estate management functions based on actionable events.
Ghost is gone but Crafty seems to have survived just outside the blast radius – at least for the time being. We’ve seen this before and the manifestations of radiation burn can take a bit longer to set in for some. Economic Engineer and Dimitrij (or Doctor Yootz as he-she likes to be called) must be still crunching the numbers at some remote location. Stay tuned……………
Since then Tux has played the form letter game on his blog, claiming that he wasn’t banned but instead canceled his account. The email is a standard form letter and all he did was change the dates and names. Please Tux, we know better, I can’t even call this a nice try.
Ha Ha Ha! to think he believed anybody would actually buy into that one. Ha Ha Ha! that just goes to show his thinking. it must make him feel better in some small way.
but the truth is, SL is all he has. he isnt going anywhere. proxy is his friend. and his only friend. logging in is his way of life, do or die.
The getting arrested for wasting “authorities” time, was also a very uninformed and childish statement. I guess I was mistaken, his blogs are his friends too. I suppose that makes him a popular fellow. Attention wanted and received, well yes. That must count for something. Attention to details, not nearly his strongest suit and an entirely different matter to be sure.
Nip/Tux(clever handle by the way),
This sort of behavior is pretty much par for the course with Tux. Your observations are valid but I will advise we keep personal commentary to a minimum in future replies, lest we take the path of the Herald and give way to the sort of degenerate back and forth common there, Cheers.
That was the extent of it. Thanks for the nudge.
Cheers
Thanks Nip. We were already aware of those bans.
Tizzers Foxchase (tizzyfits resident) – was removed in advance of Tux due to alt abuse
Griffer Zero – Was removed alongside Tux
My Vendetta – Was removed alongside Tux
Alexy Romanov – Was removed alongside Tux
Dicking Highwater – Was removed in advance of Tux and Tizzyfits
Utopian Ghost – Was removed alongside Tux
Tux’s report that his removal from SL was by choice is far from the truth given other individuals also lost their account. It is important to note Tux lost several alt accounts as well in this sweep. A self removal cannot account for a mass ban.
More than that, we have Ryokashi Revestel reporting to a member of the League that Tux had been on the phone to Linden Lab trying to get his account restored, and found the Linden support representative to be singularly unenthusiastic about the idea to say the very least. We thank Ryokashi for his candor, but remind him that as a member of the Wrong Hands, he too should not be attempting to log back into Second Life. There are other things to do online – it’s a big internet.
Restored based upon what?
I’m actually amongst one of the many harassed. They came into where I live and took over my spot. About a few hours before this crack down. Its good to see justice being done.
“With the loss of their sims Red Square and Revolution, the power of the Wrong Hands over the good people of Second Life is broken.”
Not to defend anyone, but TWH/Red Square and Revolution never really held power over anyone. I was actually in those sims for a while, soon before I decided to leave SL for a while. There weren’t even that many people and it seemed relatively calm, no major drama going on.
I would actually like to take this chance to touch up on something I’ve thought about for a while now. Often, a griefer may usually receive a permanent ban if they grief several sims, even if it’s their first time. I know griefing “ruins fun” but it seems harsh to instantly drop such a hammer on some.
Like I said, I’m not specifically defending anyone, but say there’s a griefer that gets perma-banned the first time, and they decide to stop doing it but make a new account. Despite being in violations of the ToS they aren’t harming anyone if they stop, so I’ve often found myself disagreeing with the idea of completely removing someone from SL just for ban evasion if they keep to themselves.
I read both yours and Tux’s blogs, and one of his articles on something similar to this was a good example. Even if someone is banned already, they decide to just cool down, stop the drama, and just reconnect with old friends, but then are reported by strict ToS following players the moment it’s known that it’s an already banned player, it would make sense that this person would be annoyed with those that reported them, since they weren’t doing anything anymore to really hurt anyone but existing in Second Life.
It’s just a thought. I don’t mean anything serious about it. But I found myself pondering that for a while.
While I appreciate the thought and care that went into your comment, Gaara, I’ll have to disagree with you on a couple of points:
First, the existence of Red Square and Revolution exerted a kind of psychological pressure on the rest of the grid. “We’re the big bad Wrong Hands, you should fear us like Soviet Russia, and we have circumvented our last mass ban and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.” I think that was the message there, and I don’t think that’s in very much question. A lot of time and energy was put into the meme, and the entire Red Square build was based on this. It goes along with the “drop the pants” shock variety sim cover artwork they kept putting up to hide their sims from the grid map everyone else saw when they mapped them – and to deliver that message while they were at it.
The psychology of it worked the other way too, it emboldened members of the Wrong Hands to believe they had much more power and relevance to the community than they actually had. They weren’t heroes of society despite whatever tripe Pixeleen filled their heads with. The most noteworthy activities of the group involved the violation of real life laws against criminal misuse of computers and computer systems, taking random potshots at whomever they didn’t like rather than being politically motivated in any real sense. The glorification of this simply made them do stupid and dangerous things, dangerous to both themselves and to others.
So I disagree on the point that Red Square and Revolution did not give them a certain power over the rest of the grid.
To the second point, I guess that depends on your point of view. Had the Wrong Hands actually literally stayed on the island and never bothered anybody, I suspect everyone would have been perfectly okay with letting them stay on. However, it’s a mistake to believe that everybody in a group believes or thinks the same way just because they’re in a group. It’s an indicator, but not a hard and fast rule. So, while several of the Wrong Hands were just there because their buddies were, several more abused their anonymity and made life a living hell for other citizens of the grid, up to and including the disruption of major public events (like that incident two weeks ago at the Second Life Science Fiction Convention, where they kept upping the ante trying to get people to pay attention to them until they were destroying buildings toward the end of the convention, and then having Pixeleen publish dick jokes on the front page of the Herald.
If they truly had just stayed on the islands, I doubt that most people would have cared.
The time to “cool down and stop the drama” comes when you size up what you’re doing and realize you’re being a jerk without having to have that recognition externally applied. The vast majority of people can do this. Most of the griefing community cannot.
The difference here is that most of the latter group of people think that they’re entitled to do anything they cannot be expressly stopped from doing (which sometimes means not getting caught doing it). This transfers responsibility for their own behavior away from themselves and puts that responsibility on everyone else. They literally have no sense of responsibility for their own actions, because they’ve rationalized this away.
Imagine how this would be applied in the real world – taken to its logical extreme, one could say “If they didn’t want me to kill those two dozen people at the shopping mall, they shouldn’t have made it so easy to steal that semi-automatic weapon I used.” And I use this example not to equate griefing with mass murder, but to point out that the same kind of rationalization for the actions of an individual is being used. By using the mass murder example, one can clearly see the absurdity of the notion of absolving oneself of any kind of self-regulation, and how dangerous an idea like that can be. I think something’s a little broken there in people who think that way.
Me? I follow the rules. So does Linden Lab. If you screw up so badly that you have to have your entire group banned and your sims taken away two or three times, I think that’s a message you should listen to. “Go away and don’t come back” means “go away and don’t come back”.
please note that, using tracking prims and Trojan laden freebees, Trolling and posting the results of said trolls on blogs, and feeding the griefer community with scripts ec.. does not count as “never bothered anybody”. While some of that was off grid, and thus not covered by ToS specifically, the intention was clear.. to be disruptive and cause others distress, both emotionally and in some cases financially and or in regards to privacy. We’ve been accused of ARing for things that aren’t offenses by ToS, well here’s a little secret, we don’t. ARs are but one tool at our disposal and where we cannot reasonably use that, we use information, education, and provide Second life Landowners/managers with the tools to cut access off to those persons who ‘skirt the law’ but are none the less “Griefers”
Very understandable. I can’t honestly argue against more than half of what you said, to be honest. I was only in those sims for a day and due to having to change real life residences a couple of times since(personal reasons), I’ve decided SL was no longer a good investment of my time and I had to focus on more important things. But I do see where you’re coming from.
In the time I spent at WU in the past, there were a decent number of people that spent the majority of their time doing somewhat productive things, and there were others that did do the griefing thing. I just sort of hung back and watched both sides. It’s true though, that there are some people that don’t stop.
The one thing I would have to disagree on, though, is the whole psychology bit. I’m not exactly a scholar in that department, but I do invest some occasional free time in it out of interest. Even if that was what was intended, the whole “We’re the big bad Wrong Hands, you should fear us like Soviet Russia, and we have circumvented our last mass ban and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.” thing…
As I said, I can’t argue too much against it, I spent most of my last days in Club Carnage before taking off, but I highly doubt they had any major psychological hold on any area of the grid in which people had an actually proper thought process or weren’t newbies. It’s just an opinion though.
This thread needs to be stickied. The discourse here is valuable and provides critical insight at varying levels. Sticky it so as not to lose sight of the important themes expressed so well. For those currently involved (or interested) and for those who have yet to engage the grid for the first time.
There is a lot of good stuff in here………
I understand your difference in perspective, Gaara. I work with a lot of estate managers and victims of griefing (our whole team does) so I guess I would have a somewhat more broad, comprehensive exposure to the problem you do.
True. There are major differences between us, after all. I just would imagine that most land owners and victims would be more angry than afraid, though. The kind of actions performed by griefing are usually meant to rise that sort of reaction from people.
Anger /fear, same reaction in the end and like most trolls and cyber-criminals that reaction is what WU/TWH wanted, it gave them a sense of power and control. Control is after all the Griefers ‘game’ . Point being LL said enough is enough and now Tux and The Wrong Hands are relegated to being ghosts. They may appear in an alt shadow but soon are dissolved by the light. Their power is broken.
Well, if we’re talking self-asserted power by the individual/individuals/group in question, I suppose that could be true.
Crafty Waxen has disappeared from the grid.
I went over to Winkler’s site and talked to them a little. I don’t want to get too nasty about it here, because I know my comment will get trashcanned if I do (past experience), but I’ve seen better heads on a glass of root beer.
I swear to god I’m not going back to Winkler’s site. Not after the total b******* they posted about me.
In the future, please refrain from commenting on abuses on other people’s web sites. We know it’s frustrating, but SCIFI.radio isn’t intended as a forum for personal issues you may have with other site operators.
About “The Wrong Hands Logo”
Some may ask, why is this reportable… Well the answer’s pretty simple. The Tracking system that got Tux banned was and is sponsored by this group. So now, much like Woodbury’s Communist’esque flag displaying it is in effect showing support for griefing of this nature. But, you may say “this is a publicly available emblem” and you’d be right , so is a swastika. So context is important, infact one might say context is everything. So bear in mind the context when reporting use of this emblem, the Lindens will be doing so as well.
Looks like samuels Aboubakar (Robble Rubble) did have somewhere to go after all; off the grid as of this morning.
Just to put everything in perspective here, more people are interested in our article on Saban Entertainment cracking down on the Power Rangers in Second Life than the fabricated anti-JLU slam campaign being waged by the Wrong Hands – that’s showing up about 18th or so in the search results. It’s not the wild melee they’re making it out to be.
The number one search term? “Power Rangers”. You don’t hit the JLU wiki leak situation till the 48th search term. It’s not even close.
Atty (mappymapperson) wandering around near Blue yesterday, like a lost child. It sure do looky like Atlas, profile and avatar alike. Having witnessed the whole Lozlo Peng avatar skin copybot sideshow, who’s to say. If it is Atlas, being part of his own fan club is laughable. The MIA list is vast now, with too many to mention except for the more notable and entertaining Crafty Deluxe. On second thoughts ImNotGoingDahmerOnYouGuyz and LETSTALKGIRLTOGIRL are worthy of an honorable mention if for no other reason than the pure alpha character count. We’ll spare you the details on who those two were dressed up as….
tizzyfits deluxe suffered sudden instant death syndrome
Thanks for editing your post, Nip. Apparently there are people out there who absolutely hang on every single word we publish.
list of blue no-shows worth mentioning:
chapsey, Chapel Hurricane, Fuzzynuts, llListen,Propagandistic,Chapel Thistle
and a couple of other characters worth watching are Tux Deluxe and Saoirses.Both have interesting profile pictures.
probably copy-bot avatars like we’ve seen before,done up by one of the worst AH trolls of all time
These are some of the same people who perpetrated the Justice League IP collection hoax last August. The alts are Woodbury / Wrong Hands ban-evasion accounts – people who have been told repeatedly to leave Second Life and not come back.
the once fertile griefer staging ground known as Ballers City is officially off the grid. the Blue region is virtually abandoned. SLU went from boom to bust.
most of the surviving TWH actor accounts appear not be logging in with any regularity for quite some time now. when a few of the key ones are approached about what is up we aren’t even getting a “Nope” for an answer.
can anyone say sterilization?