What is a Bot software ?

[emyjollie]

Hello,

I'm curious about this on marketplace https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/EBot-Software-Bot/13369522
Someone could explain me what is it exactly? 

I posted this in abuse and griefing because i don't think it's a authorized product.

Thanks 

[Rolig Loon]

Bots are perfectly legal and are common in SL.  There are certainly places where bot can be annoying if used irresponsibly, but they perform a valuable function as greeters and models, and for performing a lot of survey and security functions.  If you use a bot, you must follow the SL bot policy  .  You may either rent server space and time to support your bot on a commercial server or, as the ad you linked offers, you may install the server software on your own computer (if you have enough memory and Internet access).

[Love Zhaoying]

Kinda pricey, innit?

[emyjollie]

Someone asked me to click on a box called "UUID Finder" from this product.
Is it possible this people can stole a avatar/account by this way?

[Parhelion Palou]

No, not possible. Your UUID is visible to anyone via your Profile, at least in Firestorm. The only way for someone to steal an account from in-world is to trick the account owner into giving them the password. That's pretty much the only way to do it from anywhere, assuming the password isn't an obvious one.

[Rolig Loon]

Not likely.  Your UUID is public information, easy to get from many sources. Try  this in a new prim:
 

default{
    touch_start(integer num){
        llSay(0, "My UUID is " + (string)llDetectedKey(0) );
    }
}

 

Edited December 12, 2017 by Rolig Loon

[emyjollie]

Ok so this box can't transform me as a bot? The box was called "UUID Finder (key) (give to your bot): ".

I thought the box could transform every people who touch it as a bot from the user of this software.

Thank you.

[Rolig Loon]

Nooooo ...  I suspect that the box not much more sophisticated than the script I just posted, and it probably uses that because it needs to know who its owner is.  There are certainly things to worry about in SL.  This isn't one of them.

 

[Lindal Kidd]

Emyjollie,

I think you don't quite understand what a bot is.  Any time a Second Life account/avatar is being run by a computer program instead of a live human being, that account and avatar is a "bot."  If you go to one of the high end fashion stores in SL that have live models, many of them are bots.  Linden Lab uses a bot with the name "testerbot" to flit around from region to region and check on sim performance.  Until the practice was banned by Linden Lab, real estate investors used "landbots" to look for cheap land for sale and snap it up quicker than a live person could.

Some years ago, "traffic"...a measure of how many people visited a place...was used as a factor in determining a place's ranking in Search results.  This gave rise to the practice of "camping"...a store owner would pay people a small amount, or give them free merchandise, just for sitting around for an hour or so.  Then the campers found out they could use bots instead of wasting their own time, and for a while there was something of an arms race between the makers of camping chairs and the makers of bot programs in an effort to keep the camping spots available for real people instead of being taken over by the bots.  Then merchants discovered that they didn't have to pay people to come and visit to increase their traffic score; they could just create an army of bot avatars and hide them away in the basement.  They did nothing but stand around all day, increasing the place's traffic score.  It got so bad that for a while, informal surveys estimated that as many as 20% of the concurrent users logged into SL at any given moment were bots.  Since that time, the practice was banned by LL, but more importantly, traffic scores no longer have much effect on Search rankings.

Some scammers use "beggar bots"...avatars that hang around popular stores and read you a script to try and get you to give them some money.

Most often though, bots have a useful purpose.  Bots are used as automated group inviters.  I have one on my land, and if a person pays a rental box for one of my properties, the bot sends them an invitation to the land group, so they don't have to wait for me to log in and do it manually.  Bots may also be used as greeters at clubs, store models, and non-player characters (NPCs) in certain roleplay games.  Whatever its use, a bot is always a combination of two things:  A Second Life account and avatar, and a software program that operates it automatically.