Quick-visit teleporting bots?

[JemyMurphy]

I have tried to search the forum on this, and I got a few clues from other threads, but I did not feel something concrete.

I wish to have some ideas and input by those familiar with this phenomenon. If you already seen it you know what I talk about.

First I noticed someone appearing right in front of my door at a skydome at 2500m up in my parcel while I was working on animation engines there. The tp-through was so fast that I did not have enough time to type the name down, so I placed a "Tracer" that report name and coordinates when an avatar entered and left my parcel.

A day later I got 'it' in the log. It had no profile. Born 2020/02/12. I tried to contact this avatar (no response). It was a member of a rp place (that send group-invite when an avatar enter their place) and it also had a pick to a landlord. I contacted the rp place who banned the account and I decided to block it from my parcel since it was annoying to think a friend tp'd in only to be disappointed.

Since this event I kept the tracer up and I noted a few avatars passing through. I first assumed they were just flying past my parcel at a high or low altitude, but now i know more.

Fast forward and I had a 2nd Tracer active on a different sim for awhile. While it was active I noted several accounts tp'ing through at a high altitude (2-4k in the air, when most of the 'stuff' there was on the ground). I noted that if I put every avatar passing both mine and that parcel on a list, and looked at commonalities, there were some, when considering different 'clusters' of avatars. There were similar styles in how they were named (some with with 1-2 letter difference, some with Firstname Surname and some named after greek gods). The similar named avatars had connected rezdates. Some 'clusters' were around 60 days old. Some around 4030 days old (1-5 days between). Some around 300-400 days old. All appearing very quickly before tp'ing away. One had the exact same coordinates every day. Others varied somewhat in latitude and coordinates. Some of these appeared BOTH on my parcel, AND the other, with about 10-20 hours in between, even if those are located very far between on the map.

Reading up on the forum, I was pointed to Tiny Empires and SurveyBots. Actually, one of the avatars was called SurveyBot## where ## is a number. Another one had "bot" in their profile. I do not know how "Tiny Empires" works.

After taking the 2nd tracer down, a friend from the place I had my 2nd Tracer rezzed asked me if a new visitor appearing on their sim was my alt. A day later I saw the very same avatar appear in a different parcel I was visiting right next to me, on ground, seemingly with no reason for it being there, and pretty far from the first landmark. It was another avatar without profile, 2019/07/16 in rezday, named after a cosmetic brand (googled it).

I would like to learn a bit more about what this is.

Edited June 1, 2020 by JemyMurphy

[Garnet Psaltery]

These sound like information-gathering bots, taking note of such things as region rating, or whether the region is still active.  I'm sure they look for more intrusive information as well which is why I ban them as soon as I find them on my visitor logs - actually I would anyway as I am the one paying for the resources they're using.  My estate ban list consists almost entirely of bot names.  You can sometimes find their names on a list of known bots but the lists I've found are generally a few years old.

[Parhelion Palou]

Groups of bots come in waves. There's a group that's currently active that has virus-themed names for each of the bots. I've found at least 5 of them, but their rez dates are all late March.  The way they behave depends on who created them. Most appear in some location, stay a little bit, then poof. One group TPed in around 1000 meters and would drop to ground level before TPing out. Look for similar behavior among several different names, or the same names popping up in regions that aren't related in usage - odds are they're bots.

Once found I keep them off all four regions, either by adding their names to a bot ejector gadget or estate banning them. You can parcel ban them, assuming you've been given the ability.

[Marianne Little]

I have heard about land buying bots. Can it be bots that are looking for very cheap land to swap up? I mean I have heard stories about persons setting wrong price when they will sell, missing a zero, and not have time to correct it before it is bought? Or 2 avatars in an empty region and they are so innocent that one person set land to sale for 0, and before the other can click buy, it is taken.

 

[Lara Panthar]

Lately each of my four parcels has been repeatedly visited by the same surveybot. It goes not just to my builds on the ground, but at every level in the sky where I have other builds..all open to the public. Three of my parcels are in totally different sims. None of them are even remotely near each other.  All are on the mainland. I have not actually seen the bot myself. But it keeps getting caught in my visitor list which I check and reset every day. It seems unlikely that this is random. Is it possible that there is something sinister behind this..like a copy bot type of thing? I have banned the bot today from all of my parcels. Anyone else have theories or knowledge about why this bot is targeting my far flung parcels?

 

[Alwin Alcott]

15 minutes ago, Lara Panthar said:

 Is it possible that there is something sinister behind this..like a copy bot type of thing? I have banned the bot today from all of my parcels. Anyone else have theories or knowledge about why this bot is targeting my far flung parcels?

 

everything is possible, but did you actually read the posts above? There is already explained what most likely those bots do.
Your thought about a copy bot thing is based on nothing and a old fairy tale, it doesn't work that way. A bit like the old quit!quit!quit! what would prevent copybotters ( no of course...)
If you don't like them on your parcel, banning is the right tool to use.

[Lara Panthar]

Yes. I did read all the posts. No one mentioned copybots. It was simply a question. Shaming someone for asking a question is not very nice regardless of how grumpy you are.

 

Lately each of my four parcels has been repeatedly visited by the same surveybot. It goes not just to my builds on the ground, but at every level in the sky where I have other builds..all open to the public. Three of my parcels are in totally different sims. None of them are even remotely near each other.  All are on the mainland. I have not actually seen the bot myself. But it keeps getting caught in my visitor list which I check and reset every day. It seems unlikely that this is random. Is it possible that there is something sinister behind this..like a copy bot type of thing? I have banned the bot today from all of my parcels. Anyone else have theories or knowledge about why this bot is targeting my far flung parcels?

 

[Garnet Psaltery]

2 hours ago, Lara Panthar said:

Lately each of my four parcels has been repeatedly visited by the same surveybot. It goes not just to my builds on the ground, but at every level in the sky where I have other builds..all open to the public. Three of my parcels are in totally different sims. None of them are even remotely near each other.  All are on the mainland. I have not actually seen the bot myself. But it keeps getting caught in my visitor list which I check and reset every day. It seems unlikely that this is random. Is it possible that there is something sinister behind this..like a copy bot type of thing? I have banned the bot today from all of my parcels. Anyone else have theories or knowledge about why this bot is targeting my far flung parcels?

 

Two reasons seem likely.  One, that the bots are actually going to many thousands of places in a day, and happen to pass by yours in that number.  Two, that there is something particularly attractive to that bot in all the parcels of yours that it visits; do they have anything in common, perhaps?

[Lara Panthar]

Good question...it is the same bot at each location and on all occasions. None of my parcels have anything in common that would attract a specific type of bot; one is a gallery, two are shops of different kinds and one is an immersive experience for all to enjoy. They are all open to the public. The only thing they have in common is that I own the parcels (and have for many years) and have created everything on the parcels. There are several parcels for sale in the general vicinity of my parcels, but this does not really explain why the bot is not just at the arranged landing point for each location, but is instead exploring all the levels of each of my parcels. My oldest parcel I have owned since 2011 and this has never happened before which is why I am questioning the bot's constant presence at this time.

[Polenth Yue]

Copybotting is unlikely. It'd create a massive amount of data and nobody wants to sift through that. If someone's going to copy your stuff, they're likely using a regular account and picking the things they're going to steal. That doesn't mean what the bots are doing is harmless, as it'd be possible to track people with enough bots checking public areas. But they might just be checking overall traffic data. Nobody really knows other than the owner.

[ArgontheDevil Ormega]

If they have appeared on my lands the security globe took care of them instantly.

[Paul Hexem]

Most of these bots are either survey or land baron. Generally they're just collecting data that you can't pick up remotely, usually for grid statistics or they're looking to buy land in the region in order to resell it.

[Prokofy Neva]

I don't have any bots at all nor would I need them as they are a needless expense gathering information that seems useless unless you are a large corporation with the resources to gather and manipulate it and make use of it. I don't see the point.

I do know land barons have bots to watch the market and various other entities gather information for God knows what purpose, and make use of 16m microparcels sometimes to place scripted devices or to run the bots.

I wish that all bots had to designate themselves as such not just to the Lindens, who require them to be registered in the premium account, but to the whole world, with some kind of visible marking, a color tag to their name -- something. So that they could be banned globally.

The Lindens probably find that bots are useful to their largest customers so they don't move against them.

[Rabid Cheetah]

On 6/1/2020 at 11:42 AM, Lara Panthar said:

Yes. I did read all the posts. No one mentioned copybots. It was simply a question. Shaming someone for asking a question is not very nice regardless of how grumpy you are.

 

Lately each of my four parcels has been repeatedly visited by the same surveybot. It goes not just to my builds on the ground, but at every level in the sky where I have other builds..all open to the public. Three of my parcels are in totally different sims. None of them are even remotely near each other.  All are on the mainland. I have not actually seen the bot myself. But it keeps getting caught in my visitor list which I check and reset every day. It seems unlikely that this is random. Is it possible that there is something sinister behind this..like a copy bot type of thing? I have banned the bot today from all of my parcels. Anyone else have theories or knowledge about why this bot is targeting my far flung parcels?

 

It's best not to engage certain folks, and just let them grumble to themselves.  I don't even bother with the reaction emojis at this point with certain folks.

[Lindal Kidd]

On 6/1/2020 at 9:06 AM, Marianne Little said:

I have heard about land buying bots. Can it be bots that are looking for very cheap land to swap up? I mean I have heard stories about persons setting wrong price when they will sell, missing a zero, and not have time to correct it before it is bought? Or 2 avatars in an empty region and they are so innocent that one person set land to sale for 0, and before the other can click buy, it is taken.

 

Landbots have been illegal for some years now...but if you are selling land to a specific person, it's still a good idea to set the land to sell to that person, not "anyone".

[Nika Talaj]

When the bots visit your parcels, do they spend time in the region visiting other parcels as well, or just yours?  Your tracer should be able to track both parcel & region visitors.

Also, if you pick a particularly troublesome avie, do you know how long it spends inworld each day?   I don't know if it's possible to 'hide' one's online status from LSL, but if you can see this avie's online status, it should be easy to track their time online.

For me, if the answers to these questions are: Yes, the bots seem to visit more parcels than yours in the regions where you own land, and Yes, they are always online - well, to my mind, that makes it less threatening, less likely to have anything to do with you in particular.