Are there methods to find out a person's other avatars

[Love Zhaoying]

48 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Linden Lab does their account identification via MAC address.

Or at least they did as of several years ago. Don't ask how I know.

Last time I mentioned this, was told (IIRC) that software also can change this (the MAC address) now.

Edited April 5 by Love Zhaoying

[Silent Mistwalker]

20 hours ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

Thirding this. The same spelling mistake? The same way of spelling like "colour" etc? A distinct use of sentence case or ellipsis ... all easier to spot signs of an alt whose main is trying to hide the fact than engineering an IP solution. Being open about your alts (expect my male alt to thumb this post and speak to my great qualities shortly) is a far easier way of doing things unless you just need a way to relax and get away from the stress of 1,000 friends in world and need a night by yourself.

Of course, most people associate alts = nefarious reasons for good reason.

So in order to easily fool you I just have to spell it colour instead of color.

Sorry no, not even that works well enough to be even remotely reliable. 

If I had a dollar for every time someone has accused me of being someone I am not based on such things, I'd be rich and not even bother with SL. There are 2 people in this house that use SL. One is male, one is female. He is not me or an alt.

[Ceka Cianci]

1 hour ago, Sid Nagy said:

The math: ... + hehehe + \o/ = Ceka
Easy peasy piece of cake.

I have waaaaaay too many Tells to ever be able to hide very good.. lol

[Katherine Heartsong]

12 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

So in order to easily fool you I just have to spell it colour instead of color.

Sorry no, not even that works well enough to be even remotely reliable. 

If I had a dollar for every time someone has accused me of being someone I am not based on such things, I'd be rich and not even bother with SL. There are 2 people in this house that use SL. One is male, one is female. He is not me or an alt.

I didn't mean one thing like a single word, you add up a large series of attributes and similarities over time that are consistent if you were planning on trying to figure out who is who. Humans are nowhere near as magically random as we think we are, we all create highly recognizable patterns in our lives, including in the way we write and speak.

I can't ever, for example, do an ellipsis attached to the words like this... since the typographer part of my brain that I've been using for 30+ years screams WRONG!!! I always ... always ... separate it from the words around it, the same way I always use en- and em-dashes correctly.

If I tried fooling via an alt in the forum I'd eventually screw up and revert back to my way of doing things, giving me away easily.

Edited April 5 by Katherine Heartsong

[Silent Mistwalker]

24 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

I didn't mean one thing like a single word

I know you didn't. Neither did I.

I'll believe it is reliable when people stop accusing me of being people I am not.

[Istelathis]

31 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

If I tried fooling via an alt in the forum I'd eventually screw up and revert back to my way of doing things, giving me away easily.

I wouldn't even bother, it seems such a waste of time to do these sort of things.  I think if I really, really wanted to for some strange reason I would just have a LLM form the replies in my posts.  My grammar is so horrible, and my style of writing is so predictable it would be almost pointless.  I could also install Grammarly, which usually wants to change everything I type.. 

 

For the fun of it, now I want to create a thread where we all make alts and try to guess one another's forum main.  It would be like masked singer, we would give little hints, based upon our past forum posts.  I just don't know how long it would last before it was locked down because of the usual forum drama, and plus I'm lazy and don't want to host one and I don't want to go through the trouble of setting up an alt.

Bing's copilot when asked to rewrite what I had written.

Quote

"Why bother with the mundane when you can elevate procrastination to an art form? If I ever felt an odd urge to actually do something, I’d probably just delegate it to a Large Language Model. My grammar’s a trainwreck, and my writing style’s as predictable as a sitcom laugh track. I could get Grammarly, but it’s so eager to edit my work, I suspect it’s plotting to take over my job.

Now, just for kicks, let’s start a forum game of ‘Guess Who’s Who.’ It’s like The Masked Singer, but with avatars and a sprinkle of internet mystery. We’ll drop clues like breadcrumbs, all based on our notorious post histories. How long before the forum implodes with drama? Who knows! But I’m too laid-back to play host, and setting up an alt sounds like a Herculean task best left to the legends—or at least someone less lazy than me."

 

Edited April 5 by Istelathis

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

"There is no way to figure out someone's other accounts..."

And yet I have had venue owners "accidentally" send a message to the wrong account a couple of times. Had a venue invite the "wrong" account to an event. Been addressed by the wrong name once (this one was likely an innocent but good guess). Had a shop deliver and update to the wrong account once also. I've TP'd into a store and had the greeter bot address me with a welcome to my other account's name...

So somebody out there is doing something. I just have no idea what or how.

 

Edited April 5 by UnilWay SpiritWeaver

[Zalificent Corvinus]

3 minutes ago, UnilWay SpiritWeaver said:

So somebody out there is doing something. I just have no idea what or how.

 

Your alt ratted you out in revenge for you not giving them enough spending money.

[Istelathis]

3 minutes ago, UnilWay SpiritWeaver said:

So somebody out there is doing something. I just have no idea what or how.

There are probably a multitude of ways people can do it, I expect at some point there will be tools similar to what teachers and professors use to identify plagiarism by comparing the writing style of people,  I've long suspected that may be the case, in which I am pretty happy that I have always been well behaved on the Internet and avoid social media as well as posting in general.

Imagine all of the trolls out there, that have a history of posting on sites like 4chan, news articles, believing they had privacy... bah!  They are in for a surprise unless this sort of thing is eventually regulated.

[Love Zhaoying]

I don't think it came up in this thread, but if someone / a group / merchant / etc. knew your email address (whether because you signed up for something or whatever), then if the same email address was associated with multiple accounts..that could be a way.

 

[Nalates Urriah]

So far this is a mix of accurate tech and oblivious opinion. Figuring out which is which shouldn't be all that hard.

There are ways to get your IP Address and MAC address. The Lindens point to the hole in the wiki. Fortunately it is technically complex and incurs a cost. So, we see very little of this type of stalking. And Firestorm has the option to disable the feature for increased security built-in.

Plus the viewers are third-party open source. There are hacker viewers. Those can send your SL ID, computer ID, SL login details including password, IP Address, MAC, OS version, etc etc...

Fortunately even a novice level of care can keep you safe in SL. There is very little one needs to do to be safe in SL.

Hiding your secrets requires a bit more care.

 

 

 

[Jaylinbridges]

6 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

So far this is a mix of accurate tech and oblivious opinion. Figuring out which is which shouldn't be all that hard.

Thank You Nalates.  I pointed out the same thing earlier, with an example - but the oblivious opinion peeps here keep changing the question, and denying the technical facts. 

I am easy to identify in SL, as are my alts.  We all use the same computer, and have the same IP address. (OMG how can that be? ) My web IP changes about every 5 months - last time my IP changed was Jan. 3, 2024.  But I am on a desktop computer in my home, with no WAN wireless internet - fiber cable from the CO rack 8 blocks away to the fiber-to-CAT5 converter box sitting 3 feet from me, that connects to my local LAN router.  The only way I can change my WAN IP would be to unplug the converter box, and disable the battery backup, and wait about 20 mins.  In some cases, I still get back the same IP after a long wait. 

So here's another fact - everyone has a different internet connection - we don't all use mobile, or connect to a building-wide wireless connection.  If four suspicious characters enter the same SL club at the same time, and all tune into the same music stream, and all have the exact same IP#, they are probably related.  If they are BDSM with neck chains, it could be a weird RL family, or just one guy with a fantasy and 3 alts.  But they are unlikely to be Rowan's random 10 neighbors.  

 

Edited April 6 by Jaylinbridges

[xDancingStarx]

10 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

My IP address is 192.168.0.160. My friend's IP address is 192.168.1.3

That's what I was hinting at in my very first post.

"Of course if you listen to support forums then games are flooded with household sharing members since it's always the brother who installed the cheat software on their pc that got them innocently caught."

The chance that people are living in the same household (or building and share the same IP) and access SL at the same time is there but it's so extremely small in comparison that it can be neglected. It will create few false positives (NEVER said it's a 100% match) but it is outweighed so ridiculously by the amount of correct matches. And again, I've made this clear many times, you're not able to say that it's a proven alt. But you're able to say that it's an alt with a very high probability. That's why RedZone was an issue. Nobody back then said "oh let's not worry about it, you can't prove anything with an IP".

Edited April 6 by xDancingStarx

[AppleJellee]

What is media streaming exactly? 

[Robberinthemuseum]

15 minutes ago, AppleJellee said:

What is media streaming exactly? 

A dj's music stream or music that's streaming on a sim. I'm accessing sl from east Asia. It is impossible for me to have secret alts 🤣. I think maybe I'm the only one accessing from my area. I have one alt for testing animations and that's it.

[Qie Niangao]

3 hours ago, AppleJellee said:

What is media streaming exactly? 

It's not limited to audio. In fact, the original "RedZone" plague was based on a particular flavor of Parcel Media (typically used for streaming video, such as in-world TVs) as opposed to Parcel Audio (DJ or "land radio" streams) or Shared Media (aka "Media on a Prim" or MoaP, used mostly for interactive webpages on in-world objects).

There's no secret about how RedZone worked. An in-world script used PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_AGENT to know the key of each avatar its media successfully targeted and passed that to a web server along with the connection attempt so that server knew the avatar key associated with the IP address making the connection.

(Sorry, somehow that comes out sounding complicated no matter how I try to explain it, but it's actually stupidly simple.)

That particular form of Parcel Media can be very handy. For example, I used it ages ago to show in-world webpages in the same language the avatar's viewer is using. It's also especially handy for this address-tracking junk but there's nothing prohibitively challenging about using other media and audio streaming to map an avatar's identity to its current connecting IP address.

The sledgehammer response is to just disable all media and audio in the viewer. Third-party viewers added a way to whitelist and blacklist specific stream addresses so you could still listen to your favorite DJ and use your SL TV, etc., without opening up to everybody's address-tracking streams.

[InnerCity Elf]

16 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

Yep, when I check my IP address via whatismyip.com it shows me in the town next to mine so good luck finding me or any alts.  The town next to mine has 188K people, my town has 51K.  

Yes, if you live in or close enough to big places, that's lucky, in that regard. If not, not so much. I've checked my IP regularly for a while, just to know how closely "it hits home". The bigger issue with this than alt guessing is combining that with "social hacking info" with the end goal of not necessarily doxxing but "knowing", potentially stalking, threatening,...

But that's a different can of worms, of course, and people who want to avoid it, need to be careful with their profiles, giving out RL info, etc., anywhere online, of course. The majority doesn't care about others or generally wishes any other human well, so you'll probably be fine, but there are always less than well-meaning people, too, so you'll never be completely safe.

[Ceka Cianci]

4 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

It's not limited to audio. In fact, the original "RedZone" plague was based on a particular flavor of Parcel Media (typically used for streaming video, such as in-world TVs) as opposed to Parcel Audio (DJ or "land radio" streams) or Shared Media (aka "Media on a Prim" or MoaP, used mostly for interactive webpages on in-world objects).

There's no secret about how RedZone worked. An in-world script used PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_AGENT to know the key of each avatar its media successfully targeted and passed that to a web server along with the connection attempt so that server knew the avatar key associated with the IP address making the connection.

(Sorry, somehow that comes out sounding complicated no matter how I try to explain it, but it's actually stupidly simple.)

That particular form of Parcel Media can be very handy. For example, I used it ages ago to show in-world webpages in the same language the avatar's viewer is using. It's also especially handy for this address-tracking junk but there's nothing prohibitively challenging about using other media and audio streaming to map an avatar's identity to its current connecting IP address.

The sledgehammer response is to just disable all media and audio in the viewer. Third-party viewers added a way to whitelist and blacklist specific stream addresses so you could still listen to your favorite DJ and use your SL TV, etc., without opening up to everybody's address-tracking streams.

This guy explains it pretty well..

For some reason, I've typed up something  in response like three times and the forum refreshed on me and erased everything I typed, so just putting a video in here instead now that went around back then of a guy explaining how it worked..

The sad scary thing to me is, the official viewer still has all media streaming full on by default and no media filter after all these years.. So new users come in fully exposed on the official viewer..

Aaanyways, here is the video of this guy explaining RZ and how it worked..

ETA: Just to add, If I remember right, there was a TOS change or something at one point in that time period.. So this video may be before that change.. But also this guy was leaving out the privacy violation part of sharing private information with other users.. Which redzone did, because connecting two accounts and then sharing that information in a network of other users, is not sharing personal information.. It's sharing private information with other users about a user.. So he kind of forgot that part..

I mainly used this video because he explains pretty well how it works.. not because of what side he was on.. hehehe

 

Edited April 6 by Ceka Cianci

[AppleJellee]

So is Redzone still available? 

And my issue was not bringing multiple alts to a sim, I just wondered if an avatar not used would show up as connected to me and as I understand it, I have to bring both avatars to the sim for that to happen, which would never apply to me.

 

[Ceka Cianci]

34 minutes ago, AppleJellee said:

So is Redzone still available? 

And my issue was not bringing multiple alts to a sim, I just wondered if an avatar not used would show up as connected to me and as I understand it, I have to bring both avatars to the sim for that to happen, which would never apply to me.

 

It was banned years ago.

Also you could bring multiple alts to a sim and not be detected, if they all had streaming media and music disabled..

The key for something like that to work is linking to a server that is outside of second life.. Media on a prim for instance, they could have a linked image anywhere in the sim or parcel..

If you had media enabled, you would connect to that server as soon as you loaded the image on the prim that was linked to the server..

They even had a hud version of RZ, where someone,like a bot could zip around the grid using it as well..

The creator of that was really wacko..

It's not to say that someone couldn't come up with their own version and just  not make it so well known..

It's just best to use a media filter anyways that exposes the urls that are attempting to have us connect to them.. the media filters expose the URLS, and we can check them out with our external browser, which won't expose our SL accounts and information they might gather..

Getting your IP is not really a big deal.. I mean there could be  a few people on the sim and a DJ see a new IP pop up on the server and you be the only one that landed in the last 20 minutes.. Hey this is your IP

Let them try that in a crowded sim, let alone try to match up alts..

They'd probably have to be Rainman like to do that figuring.. hehehe

 

Edited April 6 by Ceka Cianci

[Qie Niangao]

2 hours ago, AppleJellee said:

And my issue was not bringing multiple alts to a sim, I just wondered if an avatar not used would show up as connected to me and as I understand it, I have to bring both avatars to the sim for that to happen, which would never apply to me.

It depends who is doing the address tracking and why. One of the big problems with RedZone was that it claimed to provide "networked security" which meant that it collected every IP address/avatar identity pair it could detect and then shared that information with any paying subscriber so the landowner could ban all avatars matching the IP address of the one they thought needed banning, no matter where those "alts" were observed. I'm pretty sure it even let subscribers go snooping for alts of avatars none of which had visited the region where that subscriber's RedZone box was located, and it would know about them if they ever had media enabled while visiting any region in which RedZone was active.

So if such a system still existed, a subscriber could learn about your shared-address "alt" even if neither you nor the alt ever visited that subscriber's location. Why anyone might want to do that is none of my business, but it seems a sport of only specialized interest.

[Perrie Juran]

3 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

The creator of that was really wacko..

He was more than that. He was a convicted criminal.

https://modemworld.me/2011/08/02/redzone-closure-of-a-sort/

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/363/1028/531950/

[Ceka Cianci]

8 minutes ago, Perrie Juran said:

He was more than that. He was a convicted criminal.

https://modemworld.me/2011/08/02/redzone-closure-of-a-sort/

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/363/1028/531950/

Ya, He had a lot going on.. I just really try not to remember as much cringe as possible from back then..

There was some really creepy videos that we found of his..

Lets just say, the ones that used his product were at more risk than the ones it was detecting.. Just really creepy videos of plans in the works and just a really scary time period..

Brrrr!!

hehehe

 

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

On 4/5/2024 at 8:58 AM, Paul Hexem said:

Exactly the opposite.

My IP address is 192.168.0.160. My friend's IP address is 192.168.1.3. At any moment, people in my building range from 192.168.0.10 to .100 on the one subnet, and my friend's subnet is 192.168.1.2 to .100 not including the static assigned ones. My public subnet ranges from 192.168.10.2 to .100.

whatismyip.com thinks we all have the same IP address, because of how networks work.

Yeah 192.168.x.x just reserved for anything from your own local host?

https://superuser.com/questions/693196/who-owned-192-168-x-x-ip-address

https://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5825/why-192-168-for-local-addresses

For any engineers the above linked me to this wall of text that is the "official standard": https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1918

 

Here's some word salad:

Quote

3. Private Address Space

   The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has reserved the
   following three blocks of the IP address space for private internets:

     10.0.0.0        -   10.255.255.255  (10/8 prefix)
     172.16.0.0      -   172.31.255.255  (172.16/12 prefix)
     192.168.0.0     -   192.168.255.255 (192.168/16 prefix)

   We will refer to the first block as "24-bit block", the second as
   "20-bit block", and to the third as "16-bit" block. Note that (in
   pre-CIDR notation) the first block is nothing but a single class A
   network number, while the second block is a set of 16 contiguous
   class B network numbers, and third block is a set of 256 contiguous
   class C network numbers.

OK: It's a reserved IP for anything within the network or local stuff. It's a meaningless designation and from what I have seen almost everyone will see those numbers in their IP trace somewhere.

 

[Paul Hexem]

1 hour ago, UnilWay SpiritWeaver said:

Yeah 192.168.x.x just reserved for anything from your own local host?

Right. That's an entirely local address within a network. I also have several virtual networks set up for different things, including a VPN for some friends, and a totally open wifi subnet (with limited bandwidth) for... We'll say plausible deniability purposes.

My public Internet IP could be any of a dozen people at any moment, guaranteed. And I live in the woods. Someone in the suburbs or a real city with a setup like mine could increase that number of people by significant magnitudes.