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Sims tracking your IP adress and with it no longer allowing alts. Is this legal?

Bold Burner

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Rowan Amore

Rowan Amore

Posted
Posted
16 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I think what might not be clear is that every viewer is presented with the stream URI by SL, whether or not that viewer enables media at all. If it doesn't have media enabled, or if the filter is enabled but the specific stream hasn't been approved, then there's no way for the stream to even know the viewer exists, let alone its IP address.

Is media and such enable by default in the viewers?  It's been so long I don't recall.  If it is ON by default, lots of newer players can get caught up in lists without realizing the reason why.  

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Rowan Amore
Rowan Amore

Test it by making a new alt, turn off all media/music and see if they get banned.  

Casper Warden
Casper Warden

If you attempt to teleport to a region and it refuses you due to an estate-level ban, it will refuse any subsequent attempts from your IP address until the region is restarted. I don't think this

Solar Legion
Solar Legion

The ban type mentioned does not require media access - this is not the first time something like this has come up and I recall (vaguely) that at one point it was revealed that Estate/Region level bans

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belindacarson

belindacarson

Posted
Posted
12 minutes ago, Dorientje Woller said:

Correct, that is about rejecting and banning people and the fact that property owners are allow to set a set of rules, but it's not an official statement of Linden Labs that property owners are allowed to use IP addresses to ban somebody.

pretty self explanatory really.

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Rowan Amore

Rowan Amore

Posted
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8 minutes ago, Dorientje Woller said:

Correct, that is about rejecting and banning people and the fact that property owners are allow to set a set of rules, but it's not an official statement of Linden Labs that property owners are allowed to use IP addresses to ban somebody.

Keep you media off or set the safety filter.  Anyone who.provides a music or media stream that you watch/listen to can determine your IP address.  It's how it has always worked.  If the property owner owns the stream you're listening to on their land and want to ban you, they can ban your IP also.  It's not a big secret.  That's why you have those extra security options with media.

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Qie Niangao

Qie Niangao

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Rowan Amore said:

Is media and such enable by default in the viewers?  It's been so long I don't recall.  If it is ON by default, lots of newer players can get caught up in lists without realizing the reason why.  

Not sure but I kinda think stuff is enabled by default on the theory that newbies may want to see MoaP instructional content (for example).

Also, I don't think the Linden viewer has a media filter per se but with auto-play set to "ask" or "never" one can still be selective about which streams get through, but only if willing to be asked (or manually start) each stream each time. I have a sneaking suspicion even auto-play is enabled by default, but that's really speculative (and might vary between viewers?).

Somebody must have created a newbie alt recently and know how this actually works, or I guess we could hide our settings files in some other directory and test ourselves.

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Lewis Luminos

Lewis Luminos

Posted
Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, belindacarson said:

who's pushing? I offered you a chance to actually see the correct facts instead of the incorrect ones.  Even offered you a guided tour.

Yes. You IM'd me six times in the space of a little over an hour.  I won't be counting any more, I've blocked you.

Aaaand now I know why. You have only one group visible in your profile and it's THAT one. 

Edited by Lewis Luminos
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Dorientje Woller

Dorientje Woller

Posted
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1 minute ago, Rowan Amore said:

Keep you media off or set the safety filter.  Anyone who.provides a music or media stream that you watch/listen to can determine your IP address.  It's how it has always worked.  If the property owner owns the stream you're listening to on their land and want to ban you, they can ban your IP also.  It's not a big secret.  That's why you have those extra security options with media.

Still then, there is an issue. Let me explain with an example: 2 or 3 room mates have each their own pc/laptop linked to 1 router, each with their own credentials of which each other don't know those. The IP address that stream is getting is the one of the router, not of the individual pc's nor the users. So, you are saying that a land owner is able to ban all 2 or 3 users, if only one of the users is breaching the rules of particular land/property? Not even Linden Lab can enforce such action, coz it would exclude the one or two to gain access to Second Life on the fact that they can't determine who of the 2 or 3 has violated the TOS and/or ROC. And still, what with routers with a hardware firewall that hides the IP. 

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Qie Niangao

Qie Niangao

Posted
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12 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

If the property owner owns the stream you're listening to on their land and want to ban you, they can ban your IP also.

To be super nitpicky: they can't directly ban IP addresses, but they can ban other avatars that show up and expose the same IP address.

So we should be sure to keep our nasty alts stream-disabled and nobody will know their IP addresses match ours.

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Rowan Amore

Rowan Amore

Posted
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7 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

To be super nitpicky: they can't directly ban IP addresses, but they can ban other avatars that show up and expose the same IP address.

So we should be sure to keep our nasty alts stream-disabled and nobody will know their IP addresses match ours.

But then once that IP is in their system, couldn't they go back and ban your main?  

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belindacarson

belindacarson

Posted
Posted (edited)
28 minutes ago, Lewis Luminos said:

Yes. You IM'd me six times in the space of a little over an hour.  I won't be counting any more, I've blocked you.

Yes i sent you 6 "." to see if you were online while I was, so i could give you a guided tour to reassure you and show you the correct facts.

 

And yes Lewis, I am in the player group, I did say earlier on that I play "that game", it's how I know this stuff.  If you change your mind and would like that tour please feel free to let me know.

Edited by belindacarson
edited as other person referred to visible group, so tried to add clarity
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belindacarson

belindacarson

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, Lewis Luminos said:

There's no point. I wouldn't be enabling media anyway. Please don't message me again.

I hadn't actually messaged you after that Lewis, I just left it as you didn't seem to want the tour which was fair enough.

 

I actually answered you on a public forum, not direct messaging.

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Qie Niangao

Qie Niangao

Posted
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11 minutes ago, Dorientje Woller said:

Where say it that they are allowed to do so or this is one of their perks. Official statement of Linden Labs in this matter, that's I wanna see. Not an assumption, hearsay or gossip.

No, that's not how it works. Or if it does, it's by exception. Generally we have to deal with history of Lab (in-)actions, not any explicit statements other than the policies which everybody has already read.

I guess it's possible that Soft Linden said something back when RedZone was "handled" but it seems unlikely.

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Rowan Amore

Rowan Amore

Posted
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18 minutes ago, Dorientje Woller said:

Where say it that they are allowed to do so or this is one of their perks. Official statement of Linden Labs in this matter, that's I wanna see. Not an assumption, hearsay or gossip.

It doesn't explicitly say you can ban everyone whose name begins with D or red heads or giraffes either but a land owner can ban those, too.  Or...no reason at all.   

Anyway...what @Qie Niangaosaid.

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Prokofy Neva

Prokofy Neva

Posted
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On 1/25/2023 at 3:18 PM, Ezbeharra said:

Streaming media services like Shoutcast do not stream to you through your connection to SL. Your viewer makes a separate connection directly to the streaming media service. Otherwise LL would have to carry the additional data over its own network connections, for no benefit of their own. So when you connect to any system on the internet directly, such as the streaming media service, your public IP address (usually your home router if you're like most people) is visible to that system, and someone managing the service will be able to see it.

Now, they can't map this directly to your SL account, but what they do is notice the time you arrived on the parcel, and look at the times the connections started for the various IP addresses connected to the stream, and they match those times up to figure out your IP address. This is a good reason to leave your media/music off in your viewer until you want to turn it on. If you're at a place with lots of coming and going, it becomes a lot harder to match IP to avatar in this case.

There's really nothing mysterious or obfuscated here, it's just a little complicated.

It's done all the time. People are invited to a site where the owner has a shoutcast sim, they note your IP and your alts' IPs and see they are the same, and they ban you or just use the information as "forewarned is forearmed". Indeed they do publicize this information to their circles, their Discords, their whatever.

The same goes with blogs on third-party sites that track IP addresses so you can block spam and unwanted commenters. An SL name is used to make a comment; their IP is noted and therefore used to block them with other devices.

I guess you haven't played SL very long? But this is an ancient story, an ancient battle, and the claim of Lindens or other tekkies that this can be false or misleading, while technically correct, forget how SL is played: with other proximity data to make the call.

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Dorientje Woller

Dorientje Woller

Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

It doesn't explicitly say you can ban everyone whose name begins with D or red heads or giraffes either but a land owner can ban those, too.  Or...no reason at all.   

Anyway...what @Qie Niangaosaid.

Yes, he can, I agree, but he can not or should not be allowed to ban on IP, because than he is/might ban multiple people that have nothing to do with the/an issue at hand. As the land owner of the club where I am dj'ng says: No one can IP-ban, except Linden Lab. In order to do so, he has to do like everybody have to do, filing an abuse report against that user. And still then, I believe/assume that Linden Lab will first suspend/ban the account and not the IP.

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Prokofy Neva

Prokofy Neva

Posted
Posted (edited)
18 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

To be super nitpicky: they can't directly ban IP addresses, but they can ban other avatars that show up and expose the same IP address.

So we should be sure to keep our nasty alts stream-disabled and nobody will know their IP addresses match ours.

Unless they are using a device within SL that enables banning by IP. I don't know why we all keep having to have this very old and tired debate. 

UPDATE: If you block streaming in SL, and visit a sim with a Shoutcast server, will you not show up? Possibly? But too many people forget to block this to make it a viable solution. And I'd like to see this tested by non-interested parties.

The problem is rooted in the Lindens' early decision to solve governance problems by code, not law.

Edited by Prokofy Neva
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