bots

I was working on one of the parcels I have up for sale, night before last, when something that disconcerted me happened: a little robot-looking collection of spheres came into my range of vision, about 3 or 4 meters away (I'd guess). And when I looked right at it, it vanished. Then as I continued to work, it kept appearing and disappearing when I'd stop and look at it.

I nearly always have the Mini-map up, and saw that this phenonenon did show up as a green dot, same as any avatar.

One of its names ended in "bot". Now, what I can't remember is, was it the first name (in which case it could have been a person who named their avatar 'bot' and chooses to appear as a robot)? Or was it the last name? That could still have meant 'person', because I know there are (or were) circumstances in which people chose both their first and last names. (I should research that.)

But, conversely, if someone creates a bot, does a name with 'bot' at the end of it get assigned automatically?

When this happened, I wasn't even aware that a true bot (non-human directed, but rather just running according to a program) COULD appear as green dots on the Map. I assumed that since there was a green dot and an Avatar name-tag over the robot-looking thing, that that meant that a person was running it.

(A shy person, obviously, what with the instant teleporting away the moment my avatar stopped and looked at it.)

But having done some reading the past two days, I now know that it might NOT have been a person---that it IS possible to log in a program-in-the-guise-of an avatar. (And many, or even most, such creations aren't as clearly "robotlike" as this was---they look just like the humanoid avatars that most SL residents use.)

So.....I dunno. If it WAS a bot, what about my activities attracted it? What information was it seeking or gathering?

If it was a person.....WTF?

(No, I take that back...if it was a person, he or she doesn't need to be sweared at. I'm sure there is some unusual story there, if it was a person. Though I'm now leaning to the theory that it wasn't. A person.)