Questions about abusive users and how banning works

[EjeFief]

Hello, I was curious how banning in Second Life works. I know that you can ban someone from your land but what if that abusive user goes around being disruptive elsewhere? Can they get their account as a whole banned? Are they IP banned eventually? Or are they eventually banned by their computer's unique motherboard manufacturing number?

Edited August 25, 2017 by EjeFief

[Alwin Alcott]

12 minutes ago, EjeFief said:

Hello, I was curious how banning in Second Life works. I know that you can ban someone from your land but what if that abusive user goes around being disruptive elsewhere? Can they get their account as a whole banned? Are they IP banned eventually? Or are they eventually banned by their computer's unique motherboard manufacturing number?

yes

yes

most likely IP or MAC ban, but pretty useless when having a dynamic IP or new machine... but i'm sure LL has more choices.

[EjeFief]

Thanks for the quick response! I'm happy to know LL does IP and MAC address ban.

[Lindal Kidd]

1 hour ago, EjeFief said:

Thanks for the quick response! I'm happy to know LL does IP and MAC address ban.

They do, but only in extreme cases.  Simply being "disruptive" doesn't generally warrant such a comprehensive ban.

[Jerilynn Lemon]

A simple question:

Just what is a MAC ban as opposed to a IP ban? Is it the ultimate on breaking out the ban hammer?

[Alwin Alcott]

1 hour ago, Jerilynn Lemon said:

A simple question:

Just what is a MAC ban as opposed to a IP ban? Is it the ultimate on breaking out the ban hammer?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address

in short: a IP can be dynamic and so randomly assigned, a MAC is unique and glued to your hardware

[Madelaine McMasters]

1 hour ago, Alwin Alcott said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address

in short: a IP can be dynamic and so randomly assigned, a MAC is unique and glued to your hardware

Not quite glued... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_spoofing

Every time I log into a wi-fi network on my iPhone the MAC address changes. This is not true of my Mac, and since there's no iPhone SL viewer, MAC address spoofing would require some effort on the part of a griefer. But, it's only a matter of effort.

Edited August 27, 2017 by Madelaine McMasters

[Jerilynn Lemon]

Thank you Maddy and Alwin.

[Nova Convair]

I can change the MAC of my network interface whenever I want and I can change my IP whenever I want. In case I wanted to grief I wouldn't need much graphics capabilities so a new VM with a new machine id on every run would do fine.

I wouldn't depend on any blocking strategy. SL is wide open. What probably helps here is that changing the id's is too much efforts for the average griefer.

[Lindal Kidd]

14 hours ago, Nova Convair said:

I can change the MAC of my network interface whenever I want and I can change my IP whenever I want. In case I wanted to grief I wouldn't need much graphics capabilities so a new VM with a new machine id on every run would do fine.

I wouldn't depend on any blocking strategy. SL is wide open. What probably helps here is that changing the id's is too much efforts for the average griefer.

True, but a "MAC hardware ban" does not refer to the MAC address of your router.  It's related to the MAC hardware address of the computer itself, which is hardwired into the circuitry and cannot be changed.

[Nova Convair]

8 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

True, but a "MAC hardware ban" does not refer to the MAC address of your router.  It's related to the MAC hardware address of the computer itself, which is hardwired into the circuitry and cannot be changed.

Thats wrong. My grandma could change that adress.

There may be a few network adapter drivers that don't support that feature but so far I've never seen one.

On a typical notebook you'll have a mac for ethernet, wlan, a virtual VPN interface and maybe a virtual Network Adapter if you use a VM. It's probably exhausting if you need to change them all but it's no problem.

[Whirly Fizzle]

Unfortunately most of the griefer viewers allow you to change the reported Mac address at the login screen too.