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Possible to listen to personnal "IM's" or are my friends Paranoid?

Calista Lexico
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Calista Lexico

Calista Lexico

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Dear community, i have a few friends that were working at a club, they stated that they were positive that the owner could read their " Personal IM's" between the employee's, I was under the impression that this VIOLATES the TOS, since they are personal IM's, however they are telling me there is a "SPY CHAT" that makes that possible, Can this be true???

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Calista Lexico

Calista Lexico

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I asked them if RLV may have something do do with this, one of them said his Partner listens to his Personal IM's, as far as I know this is an impossible thing, however he said there are huds on MP for this, I went to look and saw that they only apply to Public chat, but why would anyone buy a spy hud to use for Local chat when everyone can read it, he is convinced that it is possible, I think it is Paranoia!! I wish I could assure them somehow that this can NOT be done by anyone , under any circumstances!

 

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Ted McGregor

Ted McGregor

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Your IMs are personal. Until they appear on your screen, nobody can intercept. Nobody.

If someone knows what you and others have been saying it' s always because it was leaked AFTER you received it.

Never prior. It would make SL untrustworthy to the limit and no one would ever IM anymore.

Edited by TDD123
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steeljane42

steeljane42

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11 minutes ago, Calista Lexico said:

but why would anyone buy a spy hud to use for Local chat when everyone can read it

To read it while not being there in person, I believe some of those things can send local chats to email. Although even in kinky community it's pretty rare that someone bothers with that, in my experience at least. Control is nice and all, but if you don't trust your sub enough to "spy" on their chat to know what they are doing when you're away, then you won't believe them that they just don't log other avi anyway, which makes that spy thing pointless.

it also can be used in certain RP scenarios (not necessarily kinky). For example some police/detective RP with such listener sending "records" to the remote object or other person.

Edited by steeljane42
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Selene Gregoire

Selene Gregoire

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57 minutes ago, Calista Lexico said:

Dear community, i have a few friends that were working at a club, they stated that they were positive that the owner could read their " Personal IM's" between the employee's, I was under the impression that this VIOLATES the TOS, since they are personal IM's, however they are telling me there is a "SPY CHAT" that makes that possible, Can this be true???

More than 10 years later and that rumor is still making the rounds. :|

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Fionalein

Fionalein

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32 minutes ago, TDD123 said:

It would make SL untrustworthy to the limit and no one would ever IM anymore.

yeah like people stopped using Skype ... LOL

@OP No they cannot - well unless the would use a TOS violating viewer that is ... nope, it's more likey they just had scheming snitches among their colleagues...

Edited by Fionalein
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Selene Gregoire

Selene Gregoire

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3 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

yeah like people stopped using Skype ... LOL

@OP NO they cannot - well unless the would use a TOS violating viewer that is ... nope, it's more likey they just had scheming snitches among their colleagues...

Some of us are smart enough not to use Skype. :P

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Fionalein

Fionalein

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56 minutes ago, TDD123 said:

You can create a button ' You will die now!'  for people and still many will press it.

Someone just has to... "FOR SCIENCE!" 

the_difference.png

image by xkcd.com

Edited by Fionalein
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Madelaine McMasters

Madelaine McMasters

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1 hour ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

If you login using a griefer/copybot/illegal viewer, it's quite possible that your IM conversations are sent to a 3rd party, along with your password & all manor of other information.
Don't use griefer/copybot/illegal viewers ;)

This is the point to understand. A spy, using only an illegal viewer, cannot obtain IM traffic. IM is a point-to-point facility implemented on LL servers. If the spy's viewer isn't party to the chat, it's not party to the chat, period. The only way to subvert this is to place an illegal viewer on one legitimate end of the IM connection and have it forward the messages to the spy's viewer. So victimization requires both substantial ignorance and substantial effort on the part of the victim.

Edited by Madelaine McMasters
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Coffee Pancake

Coffee Pancake

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2 hours ago, Calista Lexico said:

I asked them if RLV may have something do do with this, one of them said his Partner listens to his Personal IM's, as far as I know this is an impossible thing, however he said there are huds on MP for this, I went to look and saw that they only apply to Public chat, but why would anyone buy a spy hud to use for Local chat when everyone can read it, he is convinced that it is possible, I think it is Paranoia!! I wish I could assure them somehow that this can NOT be done by anyone , under any circumstances!

 

RLV / RLVa can only do the very specific things it has been programmed to do.

It has the ability, via a worn attachment, to block the wearers outbound or inbound messages. It actually just bins the real message and shows a placeholder - Say for example your outbound IM's were blocked - You type "wooo this is an im", the viewer ignores everything you typed and sends "*** IM Blocked by Senders Viewer ***" ... It's hard to explain why anyone would want this .. I guess you have to be there in the moment.

RLV / RLVa does not have any capability to intercept, listen to or relay IM conversations. It will never have those capabilities. On purpose. 

RLV / RLVa does have the capability to redirect what your avatars says in local chat to a channel (again, via a worn attachment). This allows your public chat to be modified by a script in some way. Sort of a speech changer.

Just for the sake of completeness, it is also impossible for a script (with or without RLV/RLVa) or someone nearby, to even know when an avatar sends an IM.

Any script can listen to channel 0 (local chat) and then do whatever it likes with it.

Although .. why anyone would want to "spy" on local chat with the intent of breaching someones privacy is kind of mind boggling the more you think about it .. especially when IM or ad-hoc groups exist.

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Coffee Pancake

Coffee Pancake

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2 hours ago, CheriColette said:

I believe the people at Linden Lab can 'listen' to our personal PM's but for gathering info after a complaint. Im sure they dont listen for pleasure.  

That's a little like listening for the sound of a single droplet in the middle of a thunder storm.

Governance will receive a staggering number of reports every single day. If LL investigated as some presume they must, they wouldn't have staff left to do anything else. This is why it's so important that reports are clear, that the screenshot is included and that location and timestamp information is exact. Even then ... the list of reportable offenses has shrunk down significantly over the years, and it can still take days ... by which time server logs will have been deleted.

In some cases, such as mainland greif litter, you're probably going to get a significantly faster response with a support ticket requesting a clean up, than reporting the objects as abuse.

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Lindal Kidd

Lindal Kidd

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@Calista Lexico,

IMs are, as just about everyone here has told you, private and secure, and cannot be intercepted.  There are no HUDs that can do this.

The only borderline cases are the ones mentioned by @Whirly Fizzle and @CheriColette: if YOU use an illegal third party viewer, it might send your IMs to the viewer developer; and LL themselves have access to chat and IM logs for all of SL, which they use to investigate reports of abuse.

Of course, no matter what we say here, if some of your friends are convinced that IMs can be intercepted, nothing will persuade them otherwise.  Whenever someone tells me they can intercept my IMs, I simply challenge them.  "OK.  I'm sending an IM right now to one of my alts.  I will pay you $L50,000 if you can intercept it and quote it to me verbatim."  You can even give them your alt's name.  (I recommend doing this with an alt because if you send it to any third party, they might be willing to cooperate with the self-proclaimed "spy".)

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Qie Niangao

Qie Niangao

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53 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

(I recommend doing this with an alt because if you send it to any third party, they might be willing to cooperate with the self-proclaimed "spy".)

I wouldn't trust my alts. They're all so subject to blackmail.

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Fionalein

Fionalein

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2 hours ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Well... you know... if you didn't keep blackmailing them you might could have trusted them... maybe... kinda... sorta...

no excuses, they are alts - that alone shows they are run by untrustworthy people ;)

 

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