BOTs stored in Linden Seas

[Nimh20 Vandeverre]

Ok I looked at the map and saw green dots in the Linden water sims.  Upon investigation their a tons of Mainland Water Sims.owned by LL that people are storing their BOTs in. 

Is this resource use fair to people renting a Mainland Sim. from you for $195 a month and sharing resources on the same server (host IP) as the ones where residents are storing their BOTs. I mean you have what, around 18 SIMs on a Class 7 Server. 

Should I go around and report all these or can the Maintenance Group and/or the Linden Department of Public Works take care of it?

[161488303349]

they not all bots. some are. some not

some of them are people playing HUD games. just need be logged in to it do that

other people in the oceans are logged in on text clients and chatting IM. they go in the oceans bc is less lag 

[Nimh20 Vandeverre]

But a lot of them are. I have a tool that tells you 16 and its legal by TOS.  And I want something done about it for reasons mentioned in my post.

[161488303349]

if on a sim that infested by bots to the extent that is affecting the sim performance then can AR them for unfair use of resources

if you sailing/swimming/flying on public sims and you get deny access bc the sims is full of parked up bots then can AR. unfair use again. same is if is your parcel sim and your friends/customers/etc cant come

you need a reason for the AR. the fact they are bots is not a reason all by itself. as bots are legal in SL  

[Perrie Juran]

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Nimh20 Vandeverre wrote:

But a lot of them are. I have a tool that tells you 16 and its legal by TOS.  And I want something done about it for reasons mentioned in my post.

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I'd be really curious what this tool is.

Some Bots are easy to recognise.  They are cleary labelled "BOT."

And while technically speaking a Bot is a usually run by a computer program, it still is an Avatar Acct registerred with Linden Lab.  And the response I have gotten in this Forum is that generally speaking there is no way to identify them as such.  But I'd have to let the experts (the Scripters here) answer that question.

I am unaware of anyplace that LL publishes a list of registerred Bots.

Regardless,  Linden Lab Official:Bot policy

Bots per se, are allowed and have legitimate uses, but inappropriate uses are violations of this policy.

For example, the following activities are violations of this policy:

• Bots causing unreasonable load on search or the regions in which they operate.
• Bots causing a nuisance by regularly getting stuck at welcome areas or infohubs. This includes the use of large numbers of land bots to get around the throttling of search requests.

 

Enforcement

Linden Lab routinely looks at search results, and will treat use of bots to gain an unfair search advantage as an abuse issue. You do not need to file an abuse report for violations; Linden Lab monitors the search results.

[Marigold Devin]

I've also seen a ton of bots/non-communicative avatars cluttering up the Linden water sims. Seems a bit of a cheek to me.

This Tiny Empires HUD game that people seem to enjoy playing, I don't get it, but I turn a blind eye if I see a bunch of avatars that look to be fully part of this particular network. But if they're being used as some kind of ruse to make a parcel of land with a store underneath it look more popular, then I AR them.

If you feel unhappy about these bots in the Linden water sims, you're at liberty to report them, and let LL decide.

I don't think it is very fair that avatars just logged in for the purpose of creating traffic or to just hang like the Tiny Empires ones do are taking up log in spaces that could be used by avatars that interact with each other or have more of a purpose.

But life in general isn't fair a lot of the time.

In short, if something doesn't sit right, and you're urged to AR it, then AR it. Allow LL to make the decision - they're hosting the show.

[Shandree]

Hm, I wouldn't personally consider them bots unless they are giving you messages etc that are obviously automated or you Im them all without any response...You may be surprised by how many are actual people...I have had 10 people next door to my mainland and talked to them and therefore am pretty sure they are not bots...Most avs that I see near my land also come and go so fast I don't worry about it...If they are staying for hours/days at a time and are always the same ones then yes I would suspect they are bots though..If it is mainland it can be commercial so I'm not sure what they usually do with them unless they are being a nuisance... This is my first account and I'm fairly new but just giving you some suggestions to try besides just using a tool/script to try to check cause that may be unreliable..I hope something is done about it if anything can be done otherwise I guess you may have to relocate and see if it's less laggy...I think mainland in general is laggy though especially in high traffic areas..

Edit..Just noticed the 125 dollars part...That stinks that you pay so much a month for it...Personally I also would try to cut back on how much I had if lag is becoming a real issue..I can only imagine having to remove everything though and how much time that would take. =/ I hope this is resolved if these avs have been there a long time and are obviously automated..

[Janelle Darkstone]

...maybe they're roleplaying drowning and they're not very good at it?

[Pussycat Catnap]

This game needs 'drowning' added to water... and swimming as something different from fly so that sims with no flight can still be swam in (a good few 'water builds' turn off flight - some of them linden builds... /facepalm).

But drowning, followed by a TP home, would clean all this mess up.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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Nimh20 Vandeverre wrote:

But a lot of them are. I have a tool that tells you 16 and its legal by TOS.  And I want something done about it for reasons mentioned in my post.

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I'd be really curious what this tool is.

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I once asked a linden "so which of these guys I just reported is a bot, and which is scripted or active" and they told me they were not allowed to tell me and I was not allowed to pry into that - but that if I kept seeing the particular abuse I had seen at the time, to just keep reporting and let them sort it out.

That was not this issue I believe, but I assume the same rule keeps applying: if you've got a bot-detector, best to get rid of it - because unless you start monitoring things like IPs and how people connect, you can't really know this. And if you start monitoring that... well you can ask some people who used to have SL accounts how they lost them...

 

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Personally I don't understand why the secrecy and why bots are not required to have something in their profile saying they are bots and who the owner is.

Everything else in SL has the owners name on it

Bots have no RL, so it isn't a matter of the bot's privacy.

Bots invade real people's privacy when they show up on your land and 'survey' it and take pics without permission

Bots are not humans.  There is no reason they have to be protected.

I see nothing in the TOS or Bot policy that says that it is against any rule to know if a avatar is a bot.

 

[Phil Deakins]

Yes, it is perfectly fair to people renting a Mainland Sim that's hosted on the same server.

No you should not go around reporting them because there is nothing to report.

You don't have a programme that can recognise bots. You have a programme that makes an attempt at recognising bots, but that's all you have.

[Qie Niangao]

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Is this resource use fair to people renting a Mainland Sim. from you for $125 a month and sharing resources on the same server (host IP) as the ones where residents are storing their BOTs.

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I, too, am skeptical that a "tool" can do much better than chance at discriminating bots from regular viewer sessions. I suppose it's possible that some bot programs have "tells" but if known, they should be easy to code out, so it seems pretty doubtful.

Be that as it may, one would have to demonstrate that the avatars (bots or not) are actually lagging the sim they're in. If not, getting rid of them is not going to help any other sims that happen to run on the same host. (Actually, it's more specific than that. They'd have to lag the sim in specific ways to have any effect on other sims on that host.)

There's a great deal of uninformed fussing about sharing hosts. The practice of upgrading and consolidating servers to reduce power, cooling, and the hardware itself is the only responsible way to operate the grid for cost-efficiency and, especially, the environment.

[Qwalyphi Korpov]

The resident who provided the previous content, if any, has replaced it with this generic statement.

[Phil Deakins]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

Personally I don't understand why the secrecy and why bots are not required to have something in their profile saying they are bots and who the owner is.

Everything else in SL has the owners name on it

Bots have no RL, so it isn't a matter of the bot's privacy.

Bots invade real people's privacy when they show up on your land and 'survey' it and take pics without permission

Bots are not humans.  There is no reason they have to be protected.

I see nothing in the TOS or Bot policy that says that it is against any rule to know if a avatar is a bot.

 

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Bots are avatars, so we can all know that an avatar is an avatar

It may that LL decided that there are good reasons for us not to be able to discover whether or not an avatar is registered as a bot (scripted agent). I.e. good uses of bots that would be spoiled if we could discover its scripted agent status.

A bot is just an avatar and, therefore, has an RL person behind it, and some good uses of bots may be ruined if we could find out that it's 'related' to another avatar.

Bots may "invade people's privacy" but an avatar with a person at the keyboard, controlling it, would be a much greater invasion of privacy.

Avatars are not human either

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Nimh20 Vandeverre wrote:

Ok I looked at the map and saw green dots in the Linden water sims.  Upon investigation their a tons of Mainland Water Sims.owned by LL that people are storing their BOTs in. 

Is this resource use fair to people renting a Mainland Sim. from you for $125 a month and sharing resources on the same server (host IP) as the ones where residents are storing their BOTs. I mean you have what, around 18 SIMs on a Class 7 Server. 

Should I go around and report all these or can the Maintenance Group and/or the Linden Department of Public Works take care of it?

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Actually I imagine most bots put almost no load on the servers because they don't move, don't need much visual information and usually are very simple to draw. There's a region in Bay City that has a club that's notorious in the neighborhood for being constantly full and dragging down sim performance. I recently went to that particular sim and saw a cluster of obvious bots on another part of the region in open non-commercial land. I had a thought - they were probably put there to reduce the number of "real" avatars that could go to the club and therefore improve the performance of the sim. The region did seem to be running quite well after botting.

[161488303349]

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Qwalyphi Korpov wrote:

 

For whatever reasons the LL has decided that disclosing what viewer or software an AV is using is a privacy violation.  So a tool that detects and reveals that an AV is using a 'bot' viewer would be an issue.  Not sure the TOS really says that but I think it's implied by the TPV agreement.

.

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I think the rule is that you not allowed to disclose any info you discover about someone to others without that someones consent

like TPVs now cant gather info on what viewers other people are using and disclose to their users

if you gather info on people that is allowed by the viewer/scripts/tools provided by linden then you allowed to know this. just cant disclose to any one else. the consent thing again

you also not allowed to hack round the official methods and controls that linden have in place to gather info on others

any tool that is designed to gather info on client viewers or bot accounts is against ToS. is against bc linden don't provide any official way of doing this

if people are doing it then is a hack that using a exploit or taking advantage of a bug or a subversion of intent. using exploits or bugs or subversions is not official linden supported so is foul of the ToS I think 

+

edit add:

subversion of intent is the one that catch a lot of people out. like just bc something can be done technical don't mean is allowed

  

[Perrie Juran]

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16 wrote:

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Qwalyphi Korpov wrote:

 

For whatever reasons the LL has decided that disclosing what viewer or software an AV is using is a privacy violation.  So a tool that detects and reveals that an AV is using a 'bot' viewer would be an issue.  Not sure the TOS really says that but I think it's implied by the TPV agreement.

.

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I think the rule is that you not allowed to disclose any info you discover about someone to others without that someones consent

like TPVs now cant gather info on what viewers other people are using and disclose to their users

if you gather info on people that is allowed by the viewer/scripts/tools provided by linden then you allowed to know this. just cant disclose to any one else. the consent thing again

you also not allowed to hack round the official methods and controls that linden have in place to gather info on others

any tool that is designed to gather info on client viewers or bot accounts is against ToS. is against bc linden don't provide any official way of doing this

if people are doing it then is a hack that using a exploit or taking advantage of a bug or a subversion of intent. using exploits or bugs or subversions is not official linden supported so is foul of the ToS I think 

+

edit add:

subversion of intent is the one that catch a lot of people out. like just bc something can be done technical don't mean is allowed

  

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A couple of points here.

LL no longer "broadcasts' the information as to what Viewer someone is using.  That was a server side function.

A "BOT" is by definition (see above) a Resistered Agent, usually run by a computer program.  It could be run by a regular Viewer, though usually lighter weight apps are used for them. 

Now while "outing Alts" is specifically prohibited, I don't see anything that would prohibit disclosing than an Avatar is a Registered Agent.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

 @ Qwalyphi and Phil

Bots are avatars but NOT human driven avatars, they are driven by software.  The last time I checked software has no RL. They are no different than a scripted animal such as a breedable, except they are avatar  mesh not made of prims. So they deserve no more privacy than any other object in SL.

A land owner has a right to state that no pictures are allowed, per the Official Policy.  But bots pay no attention to that they just show up and click away. They can't read.  I've seen survey picture taking bots show up where it is clearly stated no pictures and they ignore it.  I've had bots show up in the middle of my house frequently too.  So yes they do cause interruption and invade privacy.  Most humans have the courtesy and judgment not to go into someone's home without asking, especially when people are home. I've never had a human do this where once I explain to them why they shouldn't they keep returning.  It has happened enough times that I am seriously considering ban lines or a security system that protects my property.  I don't want to do this because I live on the Blake Sea and would like the property to remain open so as not to impede human avatars from their enjoyment.

I have nothing against bots used as models in a store, greeters, group inviters,bartenders etc. In fact my partner and I have a bot we use.  But I can't think of one legitimate use for a bot that would make it less effective if they were labeled as bots. I have never run into a bot that reacted like a human as they have limited things they do and say, so eventually they out themselves if you interact with them. Given this fact, I challenge you to give me an example of a legitimate use of a bot where it would not be effective if it was labeled as a bot in its profile and the name of the owner is there too.

I agree that no tool can detect a bot without some invasion of a human driven avatar's privacy.  So I am not advocating that.  I am saying though that they should be required to be labeled as a bot as well as have the avartar name of the person responsible for them in their profile.  There would be no invasion of privacy to the human any more than having my name as the owner of a SL pet.

[Perrie Juran]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

 @ Qwalyphi and Phil

Bots are avatars but NOT human driven avatars, they are driven by software.

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A Human Created the account and programmed the software running the Bot.

Otherwise we may be in heap big trouble 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

 @ Qwalyphi and Phil

Bots are avatars but NOT human driven avatars, they are driven by software.

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A Human Created the account and programmed the software running the Bot.

Otherwise we may be in heap big trouble 

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A human programmed the software running breedables.  Do they deserve the same privacy?

A human created the account for their bot.  I am not saying RL info should be available on the account creator, just their avatar's name.

[Phil Deakins]

A bot can be logged in on a standard viewer. It doesn't need to be "driven by software". For instance, my first sexbed demo bots were each logged in on the LL viewer - 4 of them. They were each logged in by a human - me - and just stood there on a poseball so that anyone could get on the other poseball and try a bed out before buying. They didn't talk to anyone or interact with anyone, other than they performed the animations that the customer set. They were bots and they counted for traffic. This was before the ban on traffic bots came in.

If I'd still been using viewers for them when the ban on traffic bots came in, do you honestly think that LL would have allowed them to continue if I didn't register them as scripted agents, just because they used viewers and not a bot programme? Of course not. They were inflating my traffic count by a lot by just being there doing nothing, and the ban was created to prevent the artificial inflation of traffic. They were functional, but they could just as well have been standing on the ground, having no function whatsoever other than artificially inflate the traffic count

If you still think that an avatar is only a bot if it is "driven by software", and not a bot if it uses a viewer, then do you think that I can have a couple of dozen avatars logged in with viewers, just standing around on the land, inflating my traffic? I don't think I'd get away with that, and I don't think many, if any, people would agree with you.

I'm not discussing privacy. I'm only talking about what constitutes a bot. However, there is a way of looking at it in which you are right. A bot is a robot and a robot does something automatically. Therefore it needs a programme that is written to make it do that something; i.e. "driven by software". But what we refer to as bots in SL is a bit different. Before the ban on inflating traffic came in, it was quite common to see groups of hidden(ish) avatars that were only there to inflate the traffic count. It didn't matter what software they were logged in on - viewers or special programmes - they were referred to as bots because they were unmanned and just stood there for the traffic. They are still referred to as bots, and that's the sense of 'bots' that I'm discussing here.

 

[Qie Niangao]

I think, frankly, the question of whether the critters at the bottom of some Linden water sims are or aren't bots is much less interesting than the question of how this bot-detection thing works.

(Somewhere much further down on the scale of interest is the deeply contingent question of what to do about them, if they're bots, and if they're using any signficant resources, and if that resource use would ever actually affect any other sims.)

I've been thinking about it, and theoretically, one might be able to do a pretty good job of identifying sessions running on an openmv-derived client. There's just a tremendous amount of information that viewers send to sims, and there's been a lot of change in that over time, so unless openmv picked up all those changes -- much of which would be quite irrelevant to the basic operation of a bot -- it could leak "tells" into the sim.

There's a lot less avatar information available to scripts than to other viewers, so it's more likely that an alternate client, rather than a scripted device, would be able to reliably detect such "tells."

To illustrate (with an example that I'm sure is not useful for finding bots), a viewer might make a reasonable guess as to whether another login session was running on a client derived from pre-2.0 viewer source just by watching the specific animations it plays for walking (and maybe sitting... I forget now) because those animations were updated in 2.0. Even with a server-side AO playing, you'd probably get a glimpse of that basic anim before the override anim kicked-in. This example isn't relevant to bot detection because there are still regular pre-2.0-derived viewers out there, not to mention some TPVs with viewer-internal AOs.

This also illustrates the difficulty of discriminating a bot from a text-based viewer that doesn't bother to send (nor retrieve) lots of the usual information that travels between sim and viewer, same as bots. (Cam dynamics, for example.) I strongly suspect that the particular bot-detector here is really a non-graphical-client detector, but again, theoretically, there may well be openmv-specific "tells" that could be detected.

Certainly a bot could be programmed to remove any such "tells" but I'll bet that with enough effort or luck, a dedicated bot-hunter could make a reasonable guess at current openmv-derived bots.

[Phil Deakins]

OpenMV comes with a fully working bot programme, called "Test Client". That programme is configured to tell the server what it is, although the information can be changed. I'd put money on that almost all bots use the Test Client but modified to suit a purpose.

It's been quite a while since I modified the Test Client for my bots but, if my memory is correct, the client is expected to send some information about itself when logging in (what client it is), along with the user name and password.

That client information about an in-range avatar is passed to the user's client, which is why viewers like Emerald at al were able to display it.

You are right, of course, that a client could monitor various things about an in-range avatar and make a reasoned deduction about its client, but I seriously doubt that any bot-spotter goes to those lengths. I'd put more money on that they merely go by the in-range avatar's client data, which is passed from the server, and which is why I've said that the bot-spotter mentioned in this thread can't detect bots and can only have a go at detecting them.

Of course, if a bot is logged in with the Test Client, and the user or creator of the finished test Client hasn't changed the client data that's sent to the server when logging in, or has changed it to a name that is known as a bot programme, then a bot-spotter can easily see that the in-range avatar is likely to be a bot. But, even then, it's not necessarily a bot because the Test Client programme can be manned and used by someone at the keyboard - just like a viewer is manned and used by someone at the keyboard.

For instance, I had 4 castle character bots that moved around the castle and sim. They weren't programmed to do anything other than log in to particular locations. Once logged in, they moved and did things on instructions from me personally. I didn't manually command them, of course, but I could have been at the keyboard doing it. Instead they received instructions from rezzed objects that I owned, which the programme treats as being me. Because of their client data that they passed to the server on login, a bot-spotter would have decided that they were bots even if I'd been at the keyboard commanding them by hand.

In a nutshell, a bot-spotter programme can make a reasoned deduction that an avatar is a bot but it can't know that it's a bot.

[Qie Niangao]

That would certainly make it easier, but I am of the understanding that LL has quit sending that client identification information out altogether. I could be wrong.