Open letter to Linden Lab: Enforcing policies?

[Qie Niangao]

20 minutes ago, Dorientje Woller said:

How about overruling the security settings of a landowner isn't violating the policies, I don't know what else is a violation. Example, house I have on a plot is having a "build in" security system, set in such way that I alone can access the house on top that the landowner granted me as only person access to that plot. Still those bots that everyone knows manage land into the house and remain there for a while. Putting them on a banlist ain't going to work either as they change number in the name on a regular base.

Can you describe this "build in" security system a little more? Because this certainly sounds like a scripted access-control device (a "security orb" sort of script) which is pretty much the only way a landlord could grant access to just one individual (unless that individual is themselves the landowner). If that's the case, it's not only bots but everybody who can land on the protected parcel "and remain there for a while" because that "while" is the interval for detecting an intruder.

This is all in contrast to system level access control, which prevents entry altogether, but with limitations. (As you mentioned, the explicit blacklist bans are vulnerable to alt proliferation, and the whitelist control is limited to near ground level.)

But what's interesting here is the report that bots, specifically, are even interested in invading any particular parcel. I can't think of any data they could collect on one parcel that they couldn't collect from anywhere else in the region, so unless one parcel is uniquely easy to access, I'm seeing no reason it should be a target.

[Jennifer Boyle]

I am glad "bots" are being discussed. For some time, I have thought of posting something like, "Why do people commonly refer to avatars as "bots" when there is no evidence that they are?"

The page linked by the OP says, "Bots, or scripted agents, are avatars controlled by computer programs rather than people."

If most of the avatars that people commonly refer to as bots are controlled by software, that software must have very limited capabilities. They mostly behave as one would expect an account running unattended on a viewer to behave, e.g., when the sim restarts, they go to an Infohub, where they stand motionless for hours or days. They don't even respond to chat; and they could do that if running on Radegast, a lightweight, non-graphical viewer that includes a chatbot, many instances of which can run on one PC. An account running unattended on a viewer isn't controlled by a computer program and, therefore, isn't a bot as defined by LL. It's just an AFK, unresponsive avatar.

I would expect a true bot to actually do something other than continue to stand or sit unresponsively. How many of these "bots" people are talking about do that? Why do people think that unmoving, unresponsive avatars are bots and not accounts running on a viewer controlled by an absent human being?

It seems to me that the OP's issue is with LL's definition of bot, not LL's enforcement of its bot policy.

Edited January 23, 2023 by Jennifer Boyle

[Solar Legion]

59 minutes ago, Dorientje Woller said:

How about overruling the security settings of a landowner isn't violating the policies, I don't know what else is a violation. Example, house I have on a plot is having a "build in" security system, set in such way that I alone can access the house on top that the landowner granted me as only person access to that plot. Still those bots that everyone knows manage land into the house and remain there for a while. Putting them on a banlist ain't going to work either as they change number in the name on a regular base.

1. If Teleport Routing is not set, anyone can TP to those exact coordinates
   1. Even if set, in many instances all it takes to bypass that is being on the same Region - this is intended
2. Setting a Parcel to not be public access only bars users up to a rather smallish altitude
   1. Users named directly as part of the Linden system ban list are barred from the entire parcel
   2. Security devices require you to set them up - do so
3. This was all covered in the prior thread(s)

Edited January 23, 2023 by Solar Legion

[Silent Mistwalker]

7 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

bots snatch away land before your own eyes,

 

[Silent Mistwalker]

5 hours ago, xDancingStarx said:

If I park my main account at my friend's place for 24/7, am I gaming traffic? If I park my alt account at my friend's place for 24/7, am I gaming traffic? If I park 2 alt accounts at my friend's place for 24/7, am I gaming traffic?

For the first two, the intent is highly unlikely to be to game traffic since many people do use a friend's parcel as a log in point. The third one however, crosses the line.

[Coffee Pancake]

If you park yourself someplace, you're just AFK.

If you park multiple avatars, at the same or different places .. you're not just AFK.

[Jennifer Boyle]

4 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

If you park yourself someplace, you're just AFK.

If you park multiple avatars, at the same or different places .. you're not just AFK.

Perhaps so, but what are you? Certainly not a bot by LL's definition.

[Dorientje Woller]

10 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

1. If Teleport Routing is not set, anyone can TP to those exact coordinates
2. Setting a Parcel to not be public access only bars users up to a rather smallish altitude
   1. Users named directly as part of the Linden system ban list are barred from the entire parcel
   2. Security devices require you to set them up - do so
3. This was all covered in the prior thread(s)

1. If Teleport Routing is not set, anyone can TP to those exact coordinates: This is a failure of Linden Labs in the system. Teleporting to a point where you have no access to should cancel the teleport.

2. 

1. Setting a Parcel to not be public access only bars users up to a rather smallish altitude: another failure of the system. Altitude should NOT be a factor, unless the landowner is able to set this altitude.
   1. Users named directly as part of the Linden system ban list are barred from the entire parcel: these known bots are using a number behind the name, which is changing on a regular base. Imaging yourself the hassle to add each on a banlist. There are more funnier things to do in SL than being occupied by that.
   2. Security devices require you to set them up - do so: done, but you forgot to read that, or did not mentioned it for the sake of it.
   3. There is nothing covered yet in prior threads, especially as said by the TS, by Linden Labs. They are not transparent, which bothers a lot of us.

[EliseAnne85]

Please be advised, I am not trying to alarm people by my posts above.  The information came directly from my bank and you can call your bank as well to see how to best keep yourself secure.  Keira Linden said in her post for you to enable 2fa regarding this issue.  People encourage being cautious for a reason.   It was even encouraged by a Linden to take precautions regarding this issue.  

Edited January 23, 2023 by EliseAnne85

[Rolig Loon]

2 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

5 hours ago, xDancingStarx said:

If I park my main account at my friend's place for 24/7, am I gaming traffic? If I park my alt account at my friend's place for 24/7, am I gaming traffic? If I park 2 alt accounts at my friend's place for 24/7, am I gaming traffic?

For the first two, the intent is highly unlikely to be to game traffic since many people do use a friend's parcel as a log in point. The third one however, crosses the line.

If I understand what DancingStarx is getting at, the line is kind of hard to define.  I think most people would agree with you that her first two examples are not "gaming" traffic. For you, the red line is between her second and third examples, but that's rather arbitrary.  Other people might say that three or four are OK, but five are not. In fact, DancingStarx might argue -- I'm not putting words in her mouth -- that the number of avatars doesn't matter at all.  "Gaming" traffic only becomes an issue if the avatars are under computer control rather than just AFK accounts.  After all, if I own a club and ask all my friends -- not my own alts -- to come as a flash mob, how can a bot policy about "gaming" apply?   How could LL enforce it?

4 minutes ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

10 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

If you park yourself someplace, you're just AFK.

If you park multiple avatars, at the same or different places .. you're not just AFK.

Perhaps so, but what are you? Certainly not a bot by LL's definition.

That's what makes this an intractable problem.

[Solar Legion]

2 minutes ago, Dorientje Woller said:

1. If Teleport Routing is not set, anyone can TP to those exact coordinates: This is a failure of Linden Labs in the system. Teleporting to a point where you have no access to should cancel the teleport.

2. 

1. Setting a Parcel to not be public access only bars users up to a rather smallish altitude: another failure of the system. Altitude should NOT be a factor, unless the landowner is able to set this altitude.
   1. Users named directly as part of the Linden system ban list are barred from the entire parcel: these known bots are using a number behind the name, which is changing on a regular base. Imaging yourself the hassle to add each on a banlist. There are more funnier things to do in SL than being occupied by that.
   2. Security devices require you to set them up - do so: done, but you forgot to read that, or did not mentioned it for the sake of it.
   3. There is nothing covered yet in prior threads, especially as said by the TS, by Linden Labs. They are not transparent, which bothers a lot of us.

Nope - not how the system works, not how it has ever worked and expecting otherwise is on you. All of this is known or has been covered in a multitude of threads on a variety of subjects (not just this one) and it was indeed covered in the prior thread (and possibly the original as well).

Utilize the system and options you have and if those are not enough, file a Feature Request.

At this point, this has been covered and explained to you repeatedly - someone else may choose to continue to do so if they are so inclined.

[Phil Deakins]

4 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

More recently, they used the Google Search Appliance to rank every search result on a bunch of custom factors that very heavily favored Traffic. Many sellers still think traffic matters to basic in-world merchandise search terms, but I'm sure it's nothing like it used to be.

The GSA didn't heavily favour traffic, or even lightly favour it. The benefit of traffic actually plummeted. The BIG GSA factor was HTML links to webpages. Each parcel that shows in search has a webpage, and it's those that are ranked for a searchterm. The way that LL incorporated a small value to traffic was like this...

LL created 12 webpages with nothing but links to parcel webpages in them, plus a link to the next page of the 12. The links were to the webpages  of the parcels that had the most traffic. The engine's crawler/spider started it's trip at the first of the 12 pages, which was named start.html. It gathered the links from it, and moved to the next of the 12 pages, and so on until it had indexed all 12. The first of the 12 pages listed links to the top nn trafficked parcel pages, the next had the top nn minus some from the bottom, and so one until the 12th only had the top few according to traffic. I forget how many links the first page had but I'm thinking it was something like 110, and each following page dropped the bottom 10 until the last page only had links to the top 10 traffic-ranked parcel pages. Something like that.

If you followed that, you'll realise that the top n parcels got 12 free links, one on each of the 12 pages page. The next n parcels got 11 free links, and so on. It was a simple way of including traffic as a factor, since the GSA had nothing in it that could do the job. It was a links-based engine. Only the top nn parcels got any benefit at all from traffic in the GSA system.

Then the benefit those free links became diminished, as some of us merchants organise our own HTML links. A Pick in a profile created a link to the Picked parcel's webpage. That's why some stores paid people to put the store in their Picks. It improved the store's rankings. I did it a bit differently. I discovered that working HTML links could be included in Group descriptions, and multiple links too. So I created many accounts to be members of my few groups, and they had Picks too of course. Land descriptions worked too, and I had many 4x4 parcels just for the search rankings.

All that was for the GSA, but LL replaced it with an Apache freebie search engine. That was after I'd stopped promoting my store, so I didn't get into that one. These days, traffic is still the ONLY factor in the legacy search, which is included in some 3rd party viewers such as Firestorm. So traffic bots are still beneficial.

(Sorry for the length of that)

 

1 hour ago, Dorientje Woller said:

How about overruling the security settings of a landowner isn't violating the policies, I don't know what else is a violation. Example, house I have on a plot is having a "build in" security system, set in such way that I alone can access the house on top that the landowner granted me as only person access to that plot. Still those bots that everyone knows manage land into the house and remain there for a while. Putting them on a banlist ain't going to work either as they change number in the name on a regular base.

The only security system that can prevent anyone, including bots, from entering a protected area such as you described, is the SL land banning system. It puts ban lines up which avatars can't get past. Security systems that you buy scan the area at the frequency that the creator or owner sets. Mine scan at 5 second intervals, which means that an avatar/bot can arrive and stay there at least until the next scan.

Also, almost all security devices issue warnings to allow avatars time to get off the land. They don't remove them on sight. They wait until an avatar has ignored the warnings and exceeded the period of grace before removing them.

What you described about overruling security settings is incorrect. Bots can't overrule the settings. They stay for a while because the settings allow it.

Edited January 23, 2023 by Phil Deakins

[Dorientje Woller]

Just now, Solar Legion said:

Nope - not how the system works, not how it has ever worked and expecting otherwise is on you. All of this is known or has been covered in a multitude of threads on a variety of subjects (not just this one) and it was indeed covered in the prior thread (and possibly the original as well).

Utilize the system and options you have and if those are not enough, file a Feature Request.

At this point, this has been covered and explained to you repeatedly - someone else may choose to continue to do so if they are so inclined.

So, using the system and options you have. Explain than to me why I can see on this site of those bots that the person of who I am talking to at this moment in world says that he is a premium member, while I can't see that on his profile? How did they managed to extrapolate that information? As concerned person said: That's of nobodies business, except Linden Labs.

 

[Phil Deakins]

1 hour ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

I would expect a true bot to actually do something other than continue to stand or sit unresponsively. How many of these "bots" people are talking about do that?

I wrote my main bot system to do that. When they were auto-logged out, they logged back in and, if a bot wasn't where it was supposed to be, it either relogged until it was or TPed. It was a long time ago and I forget which. I think that was pretty standard back when I was doing it, but maybe some systems didn't do it.

Edited January 23, 2023 by Phil Deakins

[Dorientje Woller]

9 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

The only security system that can prevent anyone, including bots, from entering a protected area such as you described, is the SL land banning system

Go ahead, waste your time with doing that as landowner against those bots. Rince and repeat when the next 100 bots show up ... oops you can do that only 3 times as you can only add 300 banned persons in the list.

Edited January 23, 2023 by Dorientje Woller

[Solar Legion]

Just now, Dorientje Woller said:

So, using the system and options you have. Explain than to me why I can see on this site of those bots that the person of who I am talking to at this moment in world says that he is a premium member, while I can't see that on his profile? How did they managed to extrapolate that information? As concerned person said: That's of nobodies business, except Linden Labs.

 

Covered in the prior threads: it's a script function that anybody can use.

Linden Lab added it recently so clearly they believe otherwise with regard to whom should have access to it.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

14 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

Also, almost all security devices issue warnings to allow avatars time to get off the land. They don't remove them on sight. They wait until an avatar has ignored the warnings and exceeded the period of grace before removing them.

And now I'm wondering if a general resurgence of fear and loathing of bots is going to lead to a more general return to 0 second warnings on security orbs. I await a new thread on that subject!

Paranoia runs deep.

[Rowan Amore]

18 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

how can a bot policy about "gaming" apply? 

When there are 20-30 starter avatars enclosed in an empty skybox or a sky platform just standing there yet not a single avatar is at the actual venue, that's gaming traffic.  Sometimes, it's fairly obvious that is what they're doing.  Especially when that venue has a top rating in search.  THOSE are the ones LL should be doing something about.  2 or 3 avatars AFK somewhere that ISN"T at the top of search is not the problem.

[Dorientje Woller]

11 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Covered in the prior threads: it's a script function that anybody can use.

Linden Lab added it recently so clearly they believe otherwise with regard to whom should have access to it.

I am going to ask you another, yet serious question: any idea what damage this may do to Linden Labs, when users or potential users aren't feeling secure enough about their data? Don't have to make any drawing about that.

 

Oh, that script function should be removed, coz it's painting a target on the back of premium users for posible scams.

Edited January 23, 2023 by Dorientje Woller

[Rowan Amore]

Although these aren't used to game traffic, this type of thing is what you see on sky platforms or empty sky boxes at some of the top places in search.  Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out, IMO.  That is gaming traffic and what LL has said we don't need to report because (hahaha) they do it themselves.

[Sid Nagy]

3 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

When there are 20-30 starter avatars enclosed in an empty skybox or a sky platform just standing there yet not a single avatar is at the actual venue, that's gaming traffic.  Sometimes, it's fairly obvious that is what they're doing.  Especially when that venue has a top rating in search.  THOSE are the ones LL should be doing something about.  2 or 3 avatars AFK somewhere that ISN"T at the top of search is not the problem.

Firestorm and other third party viewers could do something about that too, by ditching their legacy search. That still uses traffic ranking like Phil already pointed out.

[Solar Legion]

2 minutes ago, Dorientje Woller said:

I am going to ask you another, yet serious question: any idea what damage this may do to Linden Labs, when users or potential users aren't feeling secure enough about their data? Don't have to make any drawing about that.

Feeling secure enough with regard to what data, specifically? The mentioned call only returns account level. Nothing more.

[Dorientje Woller]

Just now, Solar Legion said:

Feeling secure enough with regard to what data, specifically? The mentioned call only returns account level. Nothing more.

Are you 100% sure? Have you seen the script? Is the script modifiable? Having faith in something is one thing, having a blind faith into something leads to disasters.

[Rowan Amore]

4 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

Firestorm and other third party viewers could do something about that too, by ditching their legacy search. That still uses traffic ranking like Phil already pointed out.

Not sure if LL search has been fixed but it had issues the last couple of years returning irrelevant results as Prok mentioned more than a few times.  I rarely use anything in search other than the destinations guide so if the TPVs did away with Legacy search and LL search works properly, I could get behind them dumping legacy search.  

[Phil Deakins]

8 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

Firestorm and other third party viewers could do something about that too, by ditching their legacy search. That still uses traffic ranking like Phil already pointed out.

LL provides the legacy search results. I imagine that, as long as LL keeps providing them, TPVs will keep offering them. I can't imagine why LL keeps hem going.