We might have a big problem Animal Crossing: New Leaf

The link I posted in #18 has got a lot longer now. Players are in a stressful situation so its difficult to understand what is being said.

It does seem (& incl what @TheHeroOfTime has found out) that any tool (possibly any item?) that you leave in the care of Kapp'n, when you go to CT islands, can then disappear & you never get back.

Do you need to put them in a closet (Post #20) or would placing tools(items) in save letters(in your pocket inventory)/dropped in your town first, be enough?

Patterns - don't understand what @TheHeroOfTime / Trippy is saying. But the advice is to save patterns with Ables before doing any CT island trips.

When you are sent back to your town - there is a difference of opinion - the players in the Bell Tree Forum link all think they are going back to their own town.
I think Trippy is saying you are going back to a copy - similar to a Dream Address copy of your town.
The issue then, is it safe to save, personally I wouldn't want to, best to error/reset? When does the game automatically save, in which case there may not be a choice to reset to remove what the hacker may have done.

If I got into this situation on a CT island as I've said before, it might be difficult to work out when its safest to flip that wifi switch. When you are in a loop showing the little white boat/Kappn' loading screen, it wouldn't feel like the safest time to error.

Players with a new 3ds don't have the ability to flip the wifi switch. All you can do is power off/turn router off.

Too late to edit, but I've been on Reddit and found a post by a hacker which adds in a bit more info.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AnimalCrossing/comments/7j0gmk/club_tortimer_hacker/
Taken the liberty of copy/pasting the whole of this hackers reply

Levice:
I'm sorry you lost your golden net. I didn't steal, it probably disappeared because when I warped to town with you, it might have copied your islands pockets over, which I didn't know it did that. But I can give you another one if you want to make up for it.

And this is extremely exaggerated, no offense. I warped us back to town and literally said random things. No I didn't possess kapp'n, especially online, I can't do that. No I can't corrupt you save, no one in the entire hacking community of Animal Crossing knows how to corrupt someone's save, especially from the island. And when I warp back to town from Club Tortimer, it took me back to my own town, and for you, your town. it doesn't load the other persons town because you are never actually able to access the town when you are at Club Tortimer, ever. That being said, I could "clear" the town of items, place rocks all over and do all this stuff, have the game save, and as soon as you leave the island, or whatever. None of that will save because the game doesn't save any of it because the only bit of info it needs to save is that little bit of your players info it brings to the island with it.

And hackers do NOT have this much power. Not turning on your wifi is unnecessary, I can't just come to your town all willy nilly. You never left the island mode of the game, we were still connected.


What I get from this is: It looks as if the hacker comes to your town, but hasn't really. The hacker goes to their town and you go to yours - but the hacker is overlaid in you town - so it looks as if they are in your town. But the hacker can definitely cause a lot of stress because in this mode they admit they can place rocks/other unspecified stuff in your town - except it isn't really your town and doesn't save.
I'm not sure whether you actually ever leave the CT island or not, ie are you really in your town with the hacker overlaid or are you in a copy of your town, but still on CT island (as far as the game saves are concerned).

Still, whatever, I'm not particularly reassured, confused as to when the game saves & what it saves; plus this was posted roughly a month ago, hackers will continue to push further.

With the patterns say in the first spot for your patternd you have a smiley face and the hacker in that slot in his patterns has a dog, you wouldn't see the dog but rather the smiley face because the game only has your patterns saved. That's why people think hackers steal them.

@TheHeroOfTime Thanks for explaining the patterns, haven't been to CT islands for, well must be years. Keep meaning to go & now not keen.
Sorry that you lost what was in your inventory - #15.
Did you flip the wifi swtich or did you let it all play out - would like to hear about your experience in more detail - if you don't mind posting/have the time to do so.

Just using common sense if there's a problem about loosing your tools just leave them in your town and as far as the game saving it does that on your way out to the island.

If you don't want to experience this then use your wireless switch and turn it off, if you don't have that turn off the power to your ds. As far as the hackers go I don't see how it would be possible for them to hack into your town from the Island. If your still worried about it then simply don't go.