Second Life users disturbed by Comsys personnel
One of the things that's held true since the launch of Second Life was that only users with the surname Linden were authorized users and wielders of grid management powers. Linden Lab has long since encouraged users to report any other user whose profile or activities suggest any endorsement by the Lab or Linden Lab connection or authority.
Indeed, it's been so deeply ingrained, particularly among the long-time users that many became quite disturbed by the appearance of avatars with the surname Comsys whose profiles indicate that they are a part of Linden Lab's distributed network operations centre.
Surprisingly, the Comsys accounts seem to be legitimate, despite the lack of any official announcement to warn users. We'd be surprised if some of them didn't get reported in the normal course of things. We certainly got enough querulous inquires from users over the last 24 hours.
This means that Tier 1 grid support has been partially outsourced from the Lab to Comsys. There's also word that the chore of reading and moderating the Second Life forums may (or perhaps already has been) outsourced to a third party.
Historically, outsourcing various functions isn't really new for the Lab, but the in-world accounts of outsourced workers have traditionally always borne the Linden moniker, and likewise for telephone support, support representatives have always provided a Linden name, even though they were not necessarily Lab employees.
The only things that confuse us about the arrangement is the lack of any announcement and the lack of the Linden surname.
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