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

[Solar Legion]

It's a "hypothetical" bordering on the usual hyperbolic paranoia/fear mongering.

[Qie Niangao]

If only we could summon William of Ockham

[Prokofy Neva]

11 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

It's true that sims absolutely need to know the IP addresses of viewers connected to them, so if we're entertaining all possible exploits then sure: there's simply no way to provide the SL service without it knowing what addresses it's serving, and theoretically there could be some secret bug that leaks IP addresses if some device can trigger such a bug. But I don't see cause to concoct such hypotheticals when there are so many ways we know IP addresses can be revealed in just a single moment of distraction. (That includes allowing a dialog-requested URL to open in a browser, where that URL is to an external server, for example, in addition to all the streaming stuff in this thread.)

But you seem to be raising a more specific possibility that the fact streaming is available on a parcel (or offered on MoaP, etc) could be enough to reveal a viewer's address to the stream server ("or any other device") even if streaming is blocked on that viewer. That's a different hypothetical, this time involving a secret bug in the viewer. I really doubt such a sneak path exists, but personally I've neither looked at the viewer source nor monitored network traffic that would necessarily reveal such a bug, and only hope somebody else does that sort of thing.

The part "about *islands* being able essentially ban IP addresses" seems to be an intentional but temporary effect of an Estate ban; I'm not sure anyone outside the Lab knows for sure whether it really uses the IP address or instead the hardware MAC address (normally mapped to each other one-for-one for the duration of an address assignment) or to other signatures knowable to a viewer running on that machine. (But the fact the Lab can make that happen doesn't mean anybody else can do it.)

I do think using streaming to collect IP addresses for any purpose other than providing the stream is a "trick" and should be grounds for real world prosecution, exactly as unauthorized use of a computing resource is subject to prosecution. But it's not, it's not even a violation of the Lab's rules, and it would be practically unenforceable anyway. Meanwhile, regarding the "informed consent" one of these sploder contraptions uses to get ("extort") users to agree to share their IP addresses in exchange for god only knows what useless trinkets, I guess the most we can ever do about that is try to shame the right upstanding carnival barker behind that system.

Qie, I don't have any theory about any secret bugs. What I do is ask the simple question of whether if on the client side, in the viewer, the resident opts to turn off streaming, so he doesn't hear it, if that means on the server side, the Shoutcast server on a sim can still see the IP address of the person coming on the sim -- or not. I chose not to hear the tree falling in the forest; it falls and makes a sound heard by anyone else anyways. That's all.

And I don't have a satisfactory answer to that question. I think the same dynamic goes on with estates -- more goes on than meets the eye and no one seems sure. It's not about any conspiracy or bugs, it's just following the mechanics of what does happen. We can't be sure this has ever been properly studied with an eye of reducing the impact of privacy of streaming services. It's also true that people forget to turn off or block the stream - they might wish to keep it off while flying around SL to stop the cacophony (I do); but then they want to hear a stream they actually like that they put in their land at home, and turn it back on. 

The fact remains that when a certain events blocked me because I called for boycotting them over their gouging prices, all my alts were banned to a man. They couldn't get all of them by manually looking in my groups and picking them out. My son, logging in from a different state with a different IP could get into the event. If I log on that account of his and attempt to go to the event, I'm blocked. So that event is banning by IP address for certain.

I might add that the same exact thing occurs when a merchant decides to ban me from their vendor -- I would think it's done by avatar key yet somehow they are able to ban all the alts. Perhaps it's because my alts aren't a secret as most of them are with the tier in groups but not all.

Nobody likes to have their alts outed. But nobody likes being fooled and harassed and deceived by alts, either. So this warfare will continue. In the early draconian days of online Internet games, I remember the devs were so paranoid about IPs and alts and "gaming the system" that if you were at work, and logged on to a gaming forum from your work computer, they would see you had another IP address despite having the same email and password and ban you from the forums just for that.  And PS some credit card companies will do the same thing to you nowadays and make you endlessly 2FA from your phone.

Edited January 28, 2023 by Prokofy Neva

[Fortyniner Beck]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Qie, I don't have any theory about any secret bugs. What I do is ask the simple question of whether if on the client side, in the viewer, the resident opts to turn off streaming, so he doesn't hear it, if that means on the server side, the Shoutcast server on a sim can still see the IP address of the person coming on the sim -- or not.

It may have changed but a couple of years ago I used to run a shoutcast server for a plot on mainland and I know that I couldn’t see ip addresses of people that didn’t have the stream turned on, it only listed “listeners”.

This was seen both when I visited the plot and also with av’s that didn’t belong to me - in my case the ip address only appeared in shoutcast logs/ listener stats once I started to listen to the stream in the client ( firestorm).

Edited January 28, 2023 by Fortyniner Beck
Fixed auto correct AB’s to av’s

[belindacarson]

4 minutes ago, Fortyniner Beck said:

It may have changed but a couple of years ago I used to run a shoutcast server for a plot on mainland and I know that I couldn’t see ip addresses of people that didn’t have the stream turned on, it only listed “listeners”.

This was seen both when I visited the plot and also with AB’s that didn’t belong to me - in my case the ip address only appeared in shoutcast logs/ listener stats once I started to listen to the stream in the client ( firestorm).

If the audio is off in the viewer, IE unticked, the IP address of an avatar won't be visible.  Or if the user is using the media filter, the stream won't play unless the user clicks allow or whitelist, which will stop the IP address being visible.

[Fortyniner Beck]

In my case I always have the viewer set to ask about streaming music and most of the time say “deny” - being on a work machine tends to mean that I don’t want music ( or voice) on in the office.

[Dorientje Woller]

To be honest, this issue is beyond the scope of Linden Labs and we should ask the following question: Is there a need that these Shoutcast streams are displaying the listeners IP addresses in the stats of the dashboard of the stream renter? For what purpose are they listed anyway? I know they are used to dertermin from where a listener is tuning in, but wouldn't it be smarter from Shoutcast to simply state "Listerner X, for example, is from Germany, Westfalen or USA, California"?

[Qie Niangao]

3 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Qie, I don't have any theory about any secret bugs. What I do is ask the simple question of whether if on the client side, in the viewer, the resident opts to turn off streaming, so he doesn't hear it, if that means on the server side, the Shoutcast server on a sim can still see the IP address of the person coming on the sim -- or not. I chose not to hear the tree falling in the forest; it falls and makes a sound heard by anyone else anyways. That's all.

By design, there is no server side until the viewer uses the stream information to initiate a connection. If the viewer went around setting up spurious stream connections that nobody listened to, it would be a very nasty viewer bug.

It's like all the web pages we don't surf to: we could click on their links but until we do, those sites can't know we exist. Or, more precisely, they can't know our IP addresses because there's no connection using our IP addresses.

Now, to stretch that analogy a bit, advertisers do have an idea how many browsers displayed their links because the site doing the displaying wants to charge for that advertising. If that were happening with SL stream URLs, it would be up to the Lab ("the site doing the displaying") to reveal the targets to whom those stream URLs were displayed. There's no way the Lab is doing that intentionally, so it would be a server-side exploit to make that happen. (And even if there were some such exploit, there's just nothing special about unused stream links, nothing the sim does with that data any more than the location of a prim.) This would be a very nasty server bug.

Your alts' troubles with venues and vendors, though, those are intriguing. That the alts could be known to venues wouldn't be completely surprising if they had ever once had media enabled. The V__d__ guy isn't the only creep collecting data (including IP addresses) to try to identify possible alts, but I'm not sure which ones are still operating or which new ones may have started. Point is, we don't know where they could be watching, so if ever an alt may have revealed its presence by allowing a connection, that alt has to be assumed burned for these purposes.

The thing is, though… vendors? I mean, I could almost imagine a secret networked banlist (fed by one of those creeps) to which some venues would subscribe, but really most everybody uses the same Casper vendors now, right? and I truly can't imagine those being compromised like that, so… if there were some other vendor-creator doing this, that would be "interesting."

[Ceka Cianci]

2 hours ago, Dorientje Woller said:

To be honest, this issue is beyond the scope of Linden Labs and we should ask the following question: Is there a need that these Shoutcast streams are displaying the listeners IP addresses in the stats of the dashboard of the stream renter? For what purpose are they listed anyway? I know they are used to dertermin from where a listener is tuning in, but wouldn't it be smarter from Shoutcast to simply state "Listerner X, for example, is from Germany, Westfalen or USA, California"?

They are renting server space and from what I remember from mine when I had it, you are pretty much an admin of the server space.. There are lots of good reasons to show individual handshakes on a server..

It's been awhile since I had my shoutcast server, but I could pretty much bounce around my stream server space almost like I could my web server I had back then for our ranch website..  I couldn't get in there and  edit things and move things around or anything like that, but I could look around.  I didn't see any difference from a shoutcats server to a gaming server..

The streams really aren't the problem, because you are connecting to  a server for music.. It's the other things in the sim that are trying to make a connection that should be the worry..

This is why a really smart guy from over at the SLU forums, came up with  the media filter that was incorporated in the Firestorm viewer and I think another viewer as well, but I can't remember that one.. maybe Catznip? I wish I could remember that guys name that came up with the filters.. I wanted to kiss him for that.. hehehe

Aaaaanyways, Like with redzone for instance, it detected a new person entering the region, it had you load a media on a prim texture which logged you at that web site, where it would get your viewer, your IP and then your account name or avatar name.. Then would log that information. Then would log and match up any other person entering the region with that IP.. Not only that but would make the connection between the two accounts and share that information with the users of redzone.

So anyone with media on without a media filter or bypassing the media filter, is open game to anything  loading something from a website, because it's connecting you to a website server.. If I put a texture of my dog from a website that I have, on a prim that is using media on a prim and you can see that dog on that prim. You just connected to my server.

The media filters give us an opt in for those types of connections.

A dj is pretty much here to DJ.. The ones to worry about are the ones trying to take advantage of people through media in other ways.

 

Edited January 28, 2023 by Ceka Cianci

[Rick Nightingale]

What Qie and Ceka say make sense, and are easy to verify using Wireshark or similar.

Ceka just beat me to saying about media on a prim being easily leveraged like that. It's one of the few script functions that does a connection from client side, and which exposes your own IP address to that connection. Trivially easy to leverage if you display media on a prim. Loading a URL does too, but you get a pop-up asking for permission to open links so it's more obvious.

Of course, any of those in-world games that want you to register on their website gather the info too. I wonder just how much sharing of data goes on behind the scenes with all of these things... my bet is a lot. Data is money.

 

Edited January 28, 2023 by Rick Daylight

[Rowan Amore]

10 hours ago, Dorientje Woller said:

I know they are used to dertermin from where a listener is tuning in, but wouldn't it be smarter from Shoutcast to simply state "Listerner X, for example, is from Germany, Westfalen or USA, California"?

That's essentially what they do.  The IP doesn't link directly to your RL identity or even your home.  It's more a general area that you might live in.

[Kavarek]

All my family and friends and regulars connect through my VPN . Better to keep things secure. However it can cause blocks without intent if multiple are shown in a similar ended masked IP.  Which is why i have it rotate. 

 

IF you connect to a stream, shoutcast records IP's and locations.  My stream I set to masking everyone and not storing data to them. It is a nice curtesy to others. I Will also relay a stream through my business server then the stream. So the stream shows the corp but not their IP. 

Normally services record Ips to prevent issues, however releasing people private data, recording it without being a service, and utilizing it in harmful manners is another can of worms. 

 

Edited January 28, 2023 by Kavarek

[shireena1]

I'm not sure this has much to do with someone in SL knowing your IP address (which really has never worried me personally) but this is a vid about how to internet and vpn's work. 

Note.. has a paid advert in the vid, I have no connection with the company, or even use the product.

(its only a dummies vid actually, most peeps already know this)

 

[shireena1]

I wouldn't be at all surprised that SL is monitored and they can see what I am typing in, my isp certainly has the option to monitor and filter my connection, if they NEED to.

[Crim Mip]

There once was a system called 'Redzone' that tracked IP addresses and linked alt accounts together so they could all be banned. Obviously once linked, it didn't matter if you changed IP's or used a VPN. They got in trouble for making the info about who was who's alt public and were eventually removed from the grid. I have no doubt there are similar systems that don't make that info public but effectively do the same thing. I've seen what you describe a number of times. I seriously doubt anyone using such a system would admit it or give any info about it as they wouldn't want it shut down. Best thing to do is just avoid the place entirely. The grid is huge and there is no single place that cool that it's worth stressing over not being able to go to.

[Ceka Cianci]

1 hour ago, Crim Mip said:

There once was a system called 'Redzone' that tracked IP addresses and linked alt accounts together so they could all be banned. Obviously once linked, it didn't matter if you changed IP's or used a VPN. They got in trouble for making the info about who was who's alt public and were eventually removed from the grid. I have no doubt there are similar systems that don't make that info public but effectively do the same thing. I've seen what you describe a number of times. I seriously doubt anyone using such a system would admit it or give any info about it as they wouldn't want it shut down. Best thing to do is just avoid the place entirely. The grid is huge and there is no single place that cool that it's worth stressing over not being able to go to.

This is why it's good to have the media filters.. Anything trying to connect you, exposes the urls trying to make the connection.

You can then look at the  link externally to where all their in world system see's is an avatar name and no way to connect it with anyone else.

I mean unless people just click allow all the time, which kind of defeats having the filters in the first place.. hehehe

Edited January 30, 2023 by Ceka Cianci

[Prokofy Neva]

On 1/28/2023 at 5:23 AM, Qie Niangao said:

By design, there is no server side until the viewer uses the stream information to initiate a connection. If the viewer went around setting up spurious stream connections that nobody listened to, it would be a very nasty viewer bug.

It's like all the web pages we don't surf to: we could click on their links but until we do, those sites can't know we exist. Or, more precisely, they can't know our IP addresses because there's no connection using our IP addresses.

Now, to stretch that analogy a bit, advertisers do have an idea how many browsers displayed their links because the site doing the displaying wants to charge for that advertising. If that were happening with SL stream URLs, it would be up to the Lab ("the site doing the displaying") to reveal the targets to whom those stream URLs were displayed. There's no way the Lab is doing that intentionally, so it would be a server-side exploit to make that happen. (And even if there were some such exploit, there's just nothing special about unused stream links, nothing the sim does with that data any more than the location of a prim.) This would be a very nasty server bug.

Your alts' troubles with venues and vendors, though, those are intriguing. That the alts could be known to venues wouldn't be completely surprising if they had ever once had media enabled. The V__d__ guy isn't the only creep collecting data (including IP addresses) to try to identify possible alts, but I'm not sure which ones are still operating or which new ones may have started. Point is, we don't know where they could be watching, so if ever an alt may have revealed its presence by allowing a connection, that alt has to be assumed burned for these purposes.

The thing is, though… vendors? I mean, I could almost imagine a secret networked banlist (fed by one of those creeps) to which some venues would subscribe, but really most everybody uses the same Casper vendors now, right? and I truly can't imagine those being compromised like that, so… if there were some other vendor-creator doing this, that would be "interesting."

If Casper could put my name in his TP product ban list as a "sample griefer," the way LazyGuy puts "brooksie brooks" the creator as the sample, then there can be mass shared vendor ban lists. A trivial matter, and it need not be some automatic scripted device but just Discord and chat and notecards, who knows. 

I still wonder if whether you mute your sound (that shouldn't matter) or disabled "streaming" for *you* to hear it, whether the Shoutcast server nevertheless picks up your IP address when you come on the sim. That's the issue. Since Shoutcast has to serve to all avatars on a sim, I don't see why it wouldn't grab your IP to serve the stream to you. By invoking "nasty bugs" of IP-grabbing gone wild, you're forgetting the use case: one sim, on to which one avatar comes, where Shoutcast is enabled, playing a stream.

[Rick Nightingale]

@Prokofy Neva I just did a quick test...

I grabbed the IP address of a stream URL on a parcel. At the time I had all media disabled as per advice in this thread. Wireshark showed no sign of the IP address being accessed when I entered the parcel.

When I enabled music by ticking the music checkbox in the volume pull-down, I got the pop-up asking to allow (or not) the stream. Still nothing in Wireshark.

As soon as I clicked allow, then wireshark came to life with connections to the stream server, thus the stream server will have got my IP address too.

That is what I would hope to happen. This is only guessing... but if I were writing the software, SL's server would inform the viewer of the stream URL for the parcel; if media is disabled then that's the end of it. The viewer knows the URL for if it is needed, but has no good reason to connect to it. If media is enabled, then the viewer makes the connection to the given service.

A further test was to TP out again, and uncheck the music check box in the sounds/volume pull-down. The stream is now on the allowed list from previously. Just pausing the music is not enough because it will auto-unpause when an allowed stream is available again. But, unticking the box again stopped connection to the stream. There was no activity to the stream's IP address until I ticked the box again (given that the stream was still allowed from last time it asked).

So... although that's only a quick test, and only parcel sounds not media on a prim, it did work as I hoped. If the sound is disabled by the checkbox, or not allowed, there is no connection to the stream server therefore no IP address is given to it.

Edit: I should say that was in Firestorm. Can't speak for other viewers but I would be shocked if they did anything different.

Edited January 31, 2023 by Rick Daylight

[Prokofy Neva]

Thanks for the test, Rick, that's helpful!

Now I want to drill further. I get it that no *connection* is made.

But we don't need a connection for a bad actor to harvest IPs to, say, doxx someone, or for a good actor even to ban someone but then wind up banning all their alts or people in their building, let's say (although I never believe in hysterical hypotheticals).

All we need is for the device to capture it; to read it; to have it. It need not *connect* or be heard; it need only be seen. So is that a distinction?

[CarlaWetter]

24 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

All we need is for the device to capture it; to read it; to have it.

All a region or media prim does is to tell your viewer that there is something or other to be found at some url. It's entirely up to your viewer to initiate a connection to said media url. The region, prim, script can't do anything to force you to initiate that connection.

If you don't connect there is no capture because yor viewer never called back to the questionable service. It does not tell the inworld prim or script or land that hey, here it is and it might consider listening. And no radio stream or media on a prim within SL will ever know if you've listened, watched or ignored it, it has by itself no means to sense use of an outside service by a viewer.

One COULD obviously have a server script call back to some script within SL to report viewers or listeners as many DJ boards do. That's however something that again only happens if your viewer initiated a connection to that server. No music listened to, no IP to be logged on the music server.

Media does not happen between SL and the viewer. SL only tells you that there is some media. Same as it may tell your viewer that there are clouds on the virtual sky or a prim cube has a plywood texture. Your viewer won't tell anything in SL that it views, listens or ignores the offer. That's only between your computer and the media server which is not within SL.

[Rick Nightingale]

For 'something' to get your IP address in the first place, a connection to something must be made from your PC. That's the only way to "see" an IP address (discounting network hacking). 'Connection' here means any packet of data sent from your PC to 'it'.

Most things, even SQL database connections from a vendor script, connect from SL's servers, not from your PC. Thus the vendor's server only sees LL's IP address. It's nearly all server side. It has to be because that's where the scripts run. Only a very few functions (like playing media on a prim) cause the viewer on your PC to make the connection directly. Plus the viewer-side functions like parcel streams, the built-in web browser, and if you click any link and allow it to open in an external web browser. But you get asked to allow that.

So, things like HUDs that use media on a prim (rather than just needing a server connection for data storage/whateveR), or any media playing on a parcel even if you can't see it because it's deliberately 'blank' or small, any streaming service, Caspervend redelivery website... all those can easily grab your IP and correlate it to your avatar.

And that is the only way to get your IP address out of SL. LL knows your IP address, every server you connect to at LL knows it, the content servers at Amazon know it. But, unless there is some secret nasty, IP-sharing stuff going on with LL's or Amazon's approval (and that would be so bad and probably illegal that I very, very much doubt it), no-one else, anywhere, can see your IP address outside the above mentioned.

Once your IP address has been captured and correlated with your avatar, then of course it's in the wild and anyone who's in the sharing loop gets it.

As to identifying possible alts... that's just a case of simple matching of multiple captures, at the hardest. Not really reliable because there is lots of IPv4 address sharing even at the service provider level.

Finally, LL I believe do record MAC addresses too. That is something that must be reported back to them by the viewer; it's the hardware address on your network card which is used at a local level only by your LAN. That can be used to ban an actual PC (or at least, that network card). Most cards can have their MACs changed easily though. I do wonder if they also get the MAC of your router - that's also possible and not necessarily as easy to change (it is on mine, but I'm special, lol). Edit: No-one else, nothing in SL, can get your MAC address.

 

Edited January 31, 2023 by Rick Daylight

[Love Zhaoying]

I think the "they have my IP address" is one of those things: not usually true, said to scare you, lets everyone else know you're not tech-savvy..

[Solar Legion]

Oh for ...

No connection made, no IP address sent. Internet Communication 101.

People really need to stop entertaining the ridiculousness.

[shireena1]

Yep, get over it peeps...

[bigmoe Whitfield]

On 1/28/2023 at 6:49 PM, shireena1 said:

I wouldn't be at all surprised that SL is monitored and they can see what I am typing in, my isp certainly has the option to monitor and filter my connection, if they NEED to.

LL can see everything you do and say in SL.   that much is known, they log everything server side.