Question?

[Paul Hexem]

On 1/23/2021 at 11:02 AM, Qie Niangao said:

All that said, I can confirm the basis of the other argument: the ban list absolutely does include "vendetta" accounts. I've been on that list (may be still for all I know) and I doubt I've ever touched one of their sploders. (Personally I'd rather all sploders were restricted to registered Skill Gaming regions only, and don't really understand why they're not.) Rather, I was among a chorus of folks criticizing this creator's business practices, years ago and "across the street," which I'm pretty confident was what earned my "vendetta ban" all those years ago.

Don't forget, not only did he add names of people from multiple forums if they made posts he didn't like, but he also joined groups in world he didn't like in order to get the list of group members and add all of them.

You'd be insane to use a product from a creator like that- in my opinion.

[Qie Niangao]

4 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

There shouldn't be any need for resident IPs to be used by anyone other than Linden Lab.  If you need someone's IP for something, you probably shouldn't be doing it. 

True. But "used" is kind of tricky because everything that does anything with Shared Media* has the IP address, whether it uses it for anything or not. That means it's impossible to know from outside whether the script is using the IP address for something sinister except if it does something sinister that's externally apparent -- such as disclose the identity of alts. Of course in theory the Lab can see inside scripts, but that's not a very practical enforcement tool at scale.

1 hour ago, Valhallena said:

the other ones collect an upfront 10-20% fee when you pay the sploder to feed the crowd

Interesting. Shows how out-of-the-loop I am. Now I wonder if the business of sploders is so far past the old illusion(?) of "parimutuel party fun" that there'd be no takers for an open source, no bot-detection, non-networked, no-fee sploder script. Not that I'm volunteering (yet), but surely one must already exist, right?

And thanks @Paul Hexem, I'd totally forgotten the bit about joining groups to ban the lot of us. 

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[Silent Mistwalker]

10 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

True. But "used" is kind of tricky because everything that does anything with Shared Media* has the IP address, whether it uses it for anything or not. That means it's impossible to know from outside whether the script is using the IP address for something sinister except if it does something sinister that's externally apparent -- such as disclose the identity of alts. Of course in theory the Lab can see inside scripts, but that's not a very practical enforcement tool at scale.

Interesting. Shows how out-of-the-loop I am. Now I wonder if the business of sploders is so far past the old illusion(?) of "parimutuel party fun" that there'd be no takers for an open source, no bot-detection, non-networked, no-fee sploder script. Not that I'm volunteering (yet), but surely one must already exist, right?

And thanks @Paul Hexem, I'd totally forgotten the bit about joining groups to ban the lot of us. 

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Have you forgotten about RedZone? I haven't.

Shared media, DJing, all [those] things that use IPs [and are a part of the SL experience] aren't the things I'm referring to. Things like RedZone and sploders that can be exploited (like RZ was) are what I am talking about. Things that grab IPs without the resident's knowledge or consent and are used for nefarious things like the database zFire kept with detailed personal information like where people worked, number of children in the family, the health issues of family members, home addresses, phone numbers. All information used to, for lack of a better way to put it, ban and blackmail SL residents just for the funsies. So, I'm a bit confused by your response.

Edited January 24, 2021 by Silent Mistwalker

[Qie Niangao]

8 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Have you forgotten about RedZone?

Well, I had several paragraphs about it in an earlier response to this thread, but I don't actually remember the particular abuses you describe, nor do I understand how anybody - even a RL criminal - could make all that from an IP address.

If these are real concerns, I'd strongly recommend only connecting to the internet through a secure VPN to completely mask one's IP address for a modest fee (and a possibly noticeable increase in ping times). 

[Silent Mistwalker]

16 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Well, I had several paragraphs about it in an earlier response to this thread, but I don't actually remember the particular abuses you describe, nor do I understand how anybody - even a RL criminal - could make all that from an IP address.

If these are real concerns, I'd strongly recommend only connecting to the internet through a secure VPN to completely mask one's IP address for a modest fee (and a possibly noticeable increase in ping times). 

It was plastered all over SLU in several threads, three of which were hundreds of pages and thousands of posts. True two were continuations but still that's a lot to read much less remember. I do remember it. He didn't get it all from an IP but the IP is where he started. And he was a RL criminal. He was on parole at the time he was selling RZ. He wasn't supposed to be online because he was convicted of internet fraud.

They were real concerns then and they are real concerns now. I can't afford even a modest fee. I can't work from home because I don't know from one day to the next, even one minute to the next, whether or not I can accomplish anything that day. Some days I do good just to wash dishes once. So we're down to one low income. Or are we supposed to cut ourselves off completely from the rest of the world? Rhetorical/philosophical question. No one should have to cut themselves off completely like that just because they can't afford something. Maybe we (humans) aren't as far out of the Dark Ages as we like to believe.

 

If you aren't getting where I'm coming from, don't worry about it. It's cool. Brain, brain, what is brain.

Edited January 24, 2021 by Silent Mistwalker

[Valhallena]

2 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

You'd be insane to use a product from a creator like that- in my opinion.

I'm not insane, I just wasn't well informed, and one can't rely on a site like sl secrets for good information. I saw his stuff on the marketplace, saw that it was popular and just bought it thinking well, if it's on the mp with all these reviews, how bad can it be?  (Btw, turns out I did purchase the sploder from the MP and did leave a negative review, he found a way to flag it and have it removed). I did manage to say something on his free stuff, it doesn't have the same effect but eh, its something.

I hope with this new financial group that has acquired linden labs, that they will find a way to rate businesses in world, the way we do on the MP.

Edited January 24, 2021 by Valhallena

[AdminGirl]

1 hour ago, Valhallena said:

I'm not insane, I just wasn't well informed, and one can't rely on a site like sl secrets for good information. I saw his stuff on the marketplace, saw that it was popular and just bought it thinking well, if it's on the mp with all these reviews, how bad can it be?  (Btw, turns out I did purchase the sploder from the MP and did leave a negative review, he found a way to flag it and have it removed). I did manage to say something on his free stuff, it doesn't have the same effect but eh, its something.

I hope with this new financial group that has acquired linden labs, that they will find a way to rate businesses in world, the way we do on the MP.

That is such a shame that stores can flag (legitimate) reviews. One more reason why the mp review system is so flawed.

Edited January 25, 2021 by AdminGirl

[Qie Niangao]

13 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

They were real concerns then and they are real concerns now.

Not sure what to say. I'm definitely not out to minimize what Redzone did, nor what the threats are now. It's just that an IP address is utterly ubiquitous, it's exposed to every webpage any browser visits, and must be for any internet-based connection. So I'm just not willing to worry about it if that would sacrifice all scripts that improve the UX with a little HTTP-based service, among many other common things in SL.

There exist free VPNs but historically those come with their own considerable risks. Personally, I prefer my odds with an exposed true IP address over using a VPN (free or paid), but I mention it as a way to disguise one's true IP address to all but the VPN provider.

As long as we're on the subject, a VPN connection should be an effective way to hide alts from systems like the networked sploders discussed here. In fact, I'm thinking an army of bots, connected through VPNs with multiple terminal IPs, could make networked sploders completely useless for anything but traffic gaming.

Thing is, I now wonder if traffic gaming weren't the whole point of a sploder network all along.

Edited January 25, 2021 by Qie Niangao