Bots?

[Vesca Starlight]

5 hours ago, Noelle Delaunay said:

It's not about the fact that bots could gather lots and lots of data about you and everyone on SL? When are you online? Do you have a job IRL? What sims do you visit? Who do you hang out with? Etc.

Actually yes that is a rather serious concern of mine, especially since some of the info I came across points to the possibility of individuals associated with troll/grief groups running some of the bots. I've seen and had to deal with people going after anyone close to a target when they can't attack the person directly. The use of bots is also a good way to stalk someone without getting abuse reported too, the person has to crap up governance with a ton of reports that may or may not be important or related to the person stalking them.

4 hours ago, Noelle Delaunay said:

You have several instruments to limit the presence of residents on your land, so if bots are really this big of an issue to you then there you go. If you don't use these instruments out of convenience then the personal impact of being annoyed by a bot can't be really this huge.

I'm pretty sure I stated it earlier but if not I'll say again that a means of filtering out specifically scripted agents would be appreciated and pretty instantly fix this issue, in much the same way that you can filter people out by payment info having a box to check (and is overridden by access list) would do nicely. Regarding people just not signing the bots up as scripted agents, I could see that being a problem but if you aren't doing anything illicit you should be setting them proper, which also makes it easy to figure out who is up to something shady.

[Malin Sabra]

On 6/5/2021 at 6:33 AM, Lillith Hapmouche said:

Bot hopping for the sake sim statistics does not justify that my private, non-of-your-business sim gets visited by at least 7 bots within an hour on my Friday night. N00b avatar, the youngest 5 to 7 years old, a blank profile with zip information spawning at random spots on the ground. I'm waiting for one of them to spawn in the firepit, actually, since you can freeze them for a little while. 

But no problem, I'll just make an allow list, if that's what social Second Life wants me to do. 🙄

If your sim was "private, non-of-your-business" they wouldn't be able to visit 🤔

-----------------------------------

I have land in 28 regions at the moment. The last 4 days Ive had 21 bots (Ive never seen previously) land on them.

Generally I don't give 2 craps about bots after I actually took the time to learn about bots and see how beneficial bots can be to the community (At least for the bot owners that share info) I am not sure who the owner of these 21 (so far 21) bots are and since they were triggering my visitor script (too many times) I just made a script that bans them all using llAddToLandBanList all I do is deed the box to the group, click it, delete it. Check the ban list and all 21 are now in there. As new ones land on my parcels I just add them to the script and can later re-deed and click. (if the bot owner contacts me I would unban them, towngen, onebatiz, thcrinfi,, asiourawfl, and all your other brothers and sisters... if you read this)

There are a few bots that I know who the owners are, such as Loubot who's website was posted on this thread already. I have seen Loubot land on my land no less than 30 times over the last year or 2. I don't bother banning because I know what the bot is doing and I enjoy looking at stats and numbers. (I don't bother banning any bots unless its visiting too often, like multiple times a day)

I think people just worry way to much about things they don't need to worry about.

My home parcel gets visited by bots very often (Billybitche used to be a regular and I bet most of you have seen the name too, this one spins in a circle and leaves and has been around for years). I just don't care. Its just collecting sim data most likely and leaving within seconds.

I 100% have bigger things to worry about.

Edited June 9, 2021 by Malin Sabra

[Lillith Hapmouche]

Yeah, stupid me, how could I allow open access to a sim not listed in search and not mentioned anywhere?

Now I can add a new plus to the list of not living on maindland: my former plot got the occasional flyby or bypasser, but never was honoured with the horde of bots.

It's so much better to have access limited to group and expect all the real folks to have room for an extra group and take the hassle of joining it before they may enter.

Sadly, I cannot report how many more potential new friends I missed, though all of them seemed so shy and silent at first.

What was I thinking of trying to be social, eeehhhwww...

[Malin Sabra]

7 hours ago, Lillith Hapmouche said:

Yeah, stupid me, how could I allow open access to a sim not listed in search and not mentioned anywhere?

Now I can add a new plus to the list of not living on maindland: my former plot got the occasional flyby or bypasser, but never was honoured with the horde of bots.

It's so much better to have access limited to group and expect all the real folks to have room for an extra group and take the hassle of joining it before they may enter.

Sadly, I cannot report how many more potential new friends I missed, though all of them seemed so shy and silent at first.

What was I thinking of trying to be social, eeehhhwww...

You could always just ban as they come. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Lillith Hapmouche]

... which doesn't keep them away in the first place...

[Alwin Alcott]

10 hours ago, Malin Sabra said:

I think people just worry way to much about things they don't need to worry about.

I can worry about my region as much i want, and need nobody to tell me i don't need to.
It's absurd to get 5 to 10 bots a day to check if you'r still owner and if the region is still present. Or whatever info they collect.
I locked mine with several restrictions since long time.
It's my most important tool to unwind from RL. Nobody needs to be there without i want them to be there.

Edited June 9, 2021 by Alwin Alcott

[Malin Sabra]

1 hour ago, Alwin Alcott said:

I can worry about my region as much i want, and need nobody to tell me i don't need to.
It's absurd to get 5 to 10 bots a day to check if you'r still owner and if the region is still present. Or whatever info they collect.
I locked mine with several restrictions since long time.
It's my most important tool to unwind from RL. Nobody needs to be there without i want them to be there.

I don't disagree with you.

You are 100% right.

Edit: There definitely should be a way to block any avi thats set as a scripted agent. That would eliminate a lot of this as long as bot owners are following the rules and setting them as a scripted agent.

Edited June 9, 2021 by Malin Sabra
added

[TlIIy]

I've just had a second close encounter of the Bot type in the last couple of days. Both on my own parcels, and 'very' close to where I was sitting. They used to keep their distance, so to speak, but not anymore. I don't want to put ban lines up, but the blocked Bot list is getting ridiculously long! I like visitors on my parcels, ones who will respond to my greeting them, and have a chat, but Bots landing as close as they are now is getting bleeping annoying!

BTW why are they necessary for Linden Home regions? Before I gave up on LH I had quite a few 'visits'!

Oh, and I pay for my SL time, so I feel I can justifiably rant about this issue 😁

[Marcus Bremser]

On 6/5/2021 at 7:59 PM, Noelle Delaunay said:

You have several instruments to limit the presence of residents on your land, so if bots are really this big of an issue to you then there you go. If you don't use these instruments out of convenience then the personal impact of being annoyed by a bot can't be really this huge. I don't claim any authority but this thread is open for discussion, and in my humble opinion the individually felt annoyance brought to you by any resident spending 8 seconds on your land, while you could prevent this by your land's privacy rules, is NOTHING compared to the big picture here. I'm calling this out, and if you're blaming me for this then please do.

Actually its not that easy. Maybe you are happy to have 20 or more scripted agents on your site each day, but many of us are not. Most of us don't want unidentified bots on our private lands (either regions or mainland lots) for various reasons mentioned by myself and others in this blog.  And many of us wish to keep the lands open to bona-fide traffic.  Using the ban list to keep bots out is impractical - its limited to 300.  Whats wrong with having bots 1) identify that they are scripted agents, 2) identify their purpose on your land which you pay for and thus are bequeathed by LL with certain rights, privileges and expectations.  If this isn't part of the 'big picture', what is an issue for you?  SL is supposed to be a service provided to us a customers for entertainment, business or social intercourse, and not a place for us to be abused by unregulated and unwanted traffic.

[Marcus Bremser]

On 6/5/2021 at 6:33 PM, Noelle Delaunay said:

What I find funny about this thread is that the main concern expressed about bots is "I own my precious land and how dare bots assuming the right to tp here for 8 seconds and annoy me." It's funny because like THIS IS YOUR MAIN CONCERN?!?! Seriously? In 2021? It's not about the fact that bots could gather lots and lots of data about you and everyone on SL? When are you online? Do you have a job IRL? What sims do you visit? Who do you hang out with? Etc.

Noelle - We pay for the pleasure of being in SL, we pay for the right to have exclusive use of certain parcels of digital land.  There is enough invasion of our lives in RL without this being expanded in to SL.  And its not about bots gathering illusory information about our digital activities, its about their their unwanted presence at all.  And its not 8 seconds and they are gone... they show up in clusters, many times a day for many minutes at a time. You are free to enjoy their presence.  Many of the rest of us should have some right of discretion as to who we invite and who we wish to not bother us during our limited recreational time online.

[Chroma Starlight]

What's that? I misheard you? Oh, BOTS not Zotz.

[TlIIy]

OK, so today a new bot landed right on top of me, on a new mainland parcel! But being a bot, there was no option to file a Bump etc  report...so do we make our parcels only available to 'Must have payment info on file'? That's unfair to those who are genuine residents, but don't use payment info for that particular avatar. I really don't like going the full ban line way!

[Maitimo]

Personally I don't mind bots as long as they aren't taking snapshots and posting them on the web...

(To be fair, that one is not a bot, he's just a genuine creep).

And banning bots from my parcel isn't going to make a blind bit of difference, all they would need to do is access some other parcel in the same region and they can still collect the same data.

That said, a possible solution on a parcel level would be a security orb that works by some kind of "captcha" style question, and eject/ban avatars that can't respond. I know it's possible because I've seen sploders with them. 

 

[Alwin Alcott]

1 hour ago, TlIIy said:

I really don't like going the full ban line way!

if you ban that specific bot, you won't need to lock your parcel .. it's a choice

[Karl Herber]

I have a security orb on my home parcel; only avatars on my whitelist can get in. That said, I've also put in the land description a note to say that anyone can request access if they can message me and tell me why.  Sailing passage would be a good reason, and I'm happy to add other local residents who want to sail through.

So far no-one's asked, but my orb has caught many avatars with blank profiles and similar names that I presume are bots. I've not bothered with banning them; by the time I get round to doing so, they no longer exist. So I am guessing that they are either used as a one-shot then deleted, or else they are getting ban-hammered.

[Marcus Bremser]

48 minutes ago, Karly Kiyori said:

I have a security orb on my home parcel; only avatars on my whitelist can get in. That said, I've also put in the land description a note to say that anyone can request access if they can message me and tell me why.  Sailing passage would be a good reason, and I'm happy to add other local residents who want to sail through.

So far no-one's asked, but my orb has caught many avatars with blank profiles and similar names that I presume are bots. I've not bothered with banning them; by the time I get round to doing so, they no longer exist. So I am guessing that they are either used as a one-shot then deleted, or else they are getting ban-hammered.

While some are only a few months old, most bots I have encountered (130 and counting) are on average 5 to 10 years old - so it is definitely worth banning them. While its really a waste of time to track and ban them, the stream of bots to my mainland parcels has been slowed as a result.

[Marcus Bremser]

1 hour ago, Alwin Alcott said:

if you ban that specific bot, you won't need to lock your parcel .. it's a choice

Agree - I am at 130 banned bots and hoping the list doesn't get to the 300 limit.

[WereBeast Alpha]

If a script was made or item I would totally buy it if it could reduce the amount of bots coming onto my land for like 20 seconds then leaving. 

[Lillith Hapmouche]

I wouldn't mind the occasional bot visit for stuff like statistics... well, actually, if I'd know why they come pestering.

But 8 or more visits from individual accounts within a single hour, always a new one? What for?

[Noelle Delaunay]

8 hours ago, Maitimo said:

a possible solution on a parcel level would be a security orb that works by some kind of "captcha" style question, and eject/ban avatars that can't respond

That would be the pretty much only chance anyway. And it still leaves the question if you want to ban anyone who is no bot who is just passing by or accidentally hitting your parcel, as they will surely not be bothered with a captcha. While you might be able to spot the majority of bots easily at the moment, let's even say an account declared as scripted agent would be identifiable by a profile property, as soon as there is widespread action against bots they would just begin actual efforts of disguising themselves. And once that has started.. well, just look at the Blizzard forums what a war against bots looks like.

Edited July 3, 2021 by Noelle Delaunay

[Maitimo]

1 hour ago, Noelle Delaunay said:

While you might be able to spot the majority of bots easily at the moment, let's even say an account declared as scripted agent would be identifiable by a profile property, as soon as there is widespread action against bots they would just begin actual efforts of disguising themselves. And once that has started.. well, just look at the Blizzard forums what a war against bots looks like.

I agree - as soon as there's a way to filter bots from arriving on your land, people will just stop registering them as bots at all, and we'll end up back at square one.

Which is basically, either ban no-one and let all the bots in, or ban everyone (except your whitelist of friends).

[CarlaWetter]

We already have an arms race of sorts. Bots have a timeout of a month after creation to circumvent age restrictions. Of a horde of 30 or 40 bots only a third or so get used some weeks, then the next charge deploys to account for manual bans. The overall number of bots make the use of parcel ban lists awkward at best. Or orbs too, a widely used orb only takes up to 100 names for memory reasons.

Putting up banlines doesn't solve the bot problem at all, enough of them travel high to be unaffected. Parcel ban lists have their limits and are awkward to manage with large numbers. Orbs, well, they often have a management issue too in the end, be it memory or awkward addition of names in greater numbers. Age restrictions? Pointless, a lot of bots are older than most of us. What actually works is to set access to payment info on file. And if you run an open place, a marina, if you just have a mainland parcel that occasionally sees legitimate air traffic you'll hurt legitimate users. I don't want to see them hurt just to handle abuse by a bunch of bots.

My personal solution was to write an experience KVP storage based blacklist that I can deploy on our places and keep updated wherever I am and can run the experience. It's wasteful but it works and keeps at least administration overhead on my side low. We run a number of open places and a bunch of people who don't care to openly document or defend their actions won't make us close up or kick legitimate users without payment info out.

 

[WereBeast Alpha]

I've looked in marketplace and nothing to prevent the bots have good reviews other than the orbs I already have on my land so for now I am using that one until one is made to prevent alt traffic bots from coming in. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 hour ago, xxVi3perxx said:

I've looked in marketplace and nothing to prevent the bots have good reviews other than the orbs I already have on my land so for now I am using that one until one is made to prevent alt traffic bots from coming in. 

I don't think there will ever be one that prevents bots from coming at all.  I don't think there is anything specific about a bot account that differs it from a regular account -- as far as attributes that a script could determine.