Who or what are Alt's

[Bentley Gandt]

I know this may sound strange, but I as with a serious note.

A friend was particpating in a photo Contest, and was doing very well, the person who was running the contest, decided that my friend was cheating by using alts to vote for him, myself my wife(sl and rl) and son (rl) where named as a alt. In my household there are 3 different people who play SL and we all use the same internet connection. I also know of other homes where more than 1 person is on SL. A few of our friends do know that we are different people.

I wonder how many homes have multiple players. I have heard of inworld software that can be used to detect "Alt's" but that is flawed my case proves

[Eileen Fellstein]

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Bentley Gandt wrote:

I know this may sound strange, but I as with a serious note.

A friend was particpating in a photo Contest, and was doing very well, the person who was running the contest, decided that my friend was cheating by using alts to vote for him, myself my wife(sl and rl) and son (rl) where named as a alt. In my household there are 3 different people who play SL and we all use the same internet connection. I also know of other homes where more than 1 person is on SL. A few of our friends do know that we are different people.

I wonder how many homes have multiple players. I have heard of inworld software that can be used to detect "Alt's" but that is flawed my case proves

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Welcome to the world of people that use devices that read your IP and make assumtions. Exactly why they need to be perma banned from SL (the devices - and possibly the people that use them too)

I lived in a houshold like you describe once. At one time there were as many as 5 different real life individuals logged into SL from that connection simultaniously and we also had friends that dropped by from time to time that had SL avi's as well.

IP proves ZERO, but it's almost 100% effective if someone wants to use it to track you down and commit a violent crime.

 

and to answer your question, an alt is a 2nd account created by the same person (or 3rd, 4th, 5th etc w/e)

[Min Barzane]

All inworld tools that could "detect" alts are ilegal due to TOS becouse they used IP trackers to hunt down for so called "Alt's" or ppl who used same IP adress/internet conection to connect to SL with multiple accounts (Alt's). Becouse of nature of those "tools" and their way of finding who is "Alt" the are ilegal in SL and persone who acused your friend and you to be "Alt's" is total idiot and takes wild guesses and pot shots at you becouse there isnt anny legal way of knowing who is who's "Alt".

Thing is if he did guess right that you and your family are sharing IP/internet connection and acused you that you are "alt's" there is possibility tha the is using some ilegal IP tracker.File abuse report in that case.

Also if he acused you in public naming names of your aleged "alt's" you can file abuse report against him for disclosing RL info and deformatory content to!

He put his foot in his own mouth,make him chew it now!

[Dillon Levenque]

It certainly does sound like the person running the contest was checking IP addresses. You said, " ...the person who was running the contest, decided that my friend was cheating by using alts to vote for him, myself my wife(sl and rl) and son (rl) where named as a alt". Seems to me the only way the person could have decided that was by noticing that three avatars had the same IP address.

If in fact he named your 'supposed' alt avatars to your friend (your quoted comment says he did) I really do think you should take the advice of others here and file an AR. Detecting IP addresses for the purpose of identifying alt accounts is against the rules; disclosing alt identities is even more against the rules and I don't think it matters whether the disclosure is accurate or not.

If that's what happened, LL should be informed.

 

ETA a word I left out

[Eileen Fellstein]

/me settles down a lil as the stream of smoke rolling out her ears dissipates into a faint mist

 

*smiles

 

Keep in mind contests such as these are generally a promotional tool for a club more than any kind of actual contest that judges any sort of talent in any way,shape or form. Best case scenario is the place has a decent amount of people who vote honestly in terms of casting their votes for people they feel best meet the contest criteria.

Usually though, it turns into little more than a popularity contest and as the club staff member you described is probably 'too' familiar with, a lot of times that means dishonest people stack the vote by using alts or otherwise discredit a would-be good thing by TPing large numbers of people at the last minute to vote when they have no idea what they are even voting for.

I'm not saying don't participate, but realize it's usually meant as a fund raiser and rarely will the winners really reflect who was actualy deserving to win.

[Seven Overdrive]

Alt = Alternate Account.

They are accounts that belong to the same person.  Many people have a few of them and some have claimed to have a couple hundred of them.  

[Perrie Juran]

They don't necessarily need to be running one of the banned alt detectors.

A.  There are no rules against a SIM owner keeping track of who has visited their SIM.

B.  If they are running a music or media stream and all three of you went there with these enabled the SIM Owner could see your IP and put the two pieces of information together.

Whether or not this violates the letter of the TOS I don't know but I'd sure feel that it violated the spirit of it.

However, because the TOS if I recall correctly prohibits "outing" an Alt, by telling you the other two Avatars are Alts they may be in violation of the TOS.

I'd imagine someone will be along who can quote chapter and verse on this now.  I'm just working off the top of my head.

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

I'm betting that the contest was rigged and your friend was disqualified because the 'right' person wasn't winning and the person running the contest looked for an excuse to fix the results.  They used an illegal script or if they were streaming and found the IP addresses and revealed that a group of people had the same one.  This is sharing RL information and that is definitely against TOS.

Not only are they violating privacy, they are showing extreme ignorance thinking that every person has a different IP address.  Not only would everyone in the same household have a common one, people in SL that are using their college or work, IP or even people living in the same apartments that include and internet connection as part of the lease could have the same  IP connection.

I'd AR them.  Get your friend to AR them too as well as any people named as alts.  I'd also ask the other contestants if any of them were accused of the same thing and get them to AR too..  The more AR"s LL receives the more serious they take it and the more likely that the action taken will be more severe.

Always stay away from any contest that says you can't use alts to vote because there is no way they can verify it and its a tip off that something is fishy.

[emmettcullen93]

alts are considered in my case a second sl account run by the same user but by your deffination our house hold has 8 avatars lol my dad has 2 i have 2 and my sis has 2 my bro and mom only have 1 each.

[Phil Deakins]

Your question as to what alts are has been answered but I have something to add here.

There is nothing in the SL rules etc. that prohibits IP addresses from being acquired. Using alts to vote in contests is a common way of cheating in SL and it sounds to me as though the runner of the contest tried to prevent that sort of cheating. I applaud it because often runners of contest don't care whether or not people cheat, which diminishes the pleasure in contests for participants.

The only way to do it is by IP addresses. An unfortunate issue with it is that different people in the same household will be seen as the same person at the computer, and it sounds like that's what happened on this occasion. You just have to live with it, I'm afraid.

Another way of rigging contest results is to enlist the votes of friends - different people, different IPs. It's still an attempt at unfailty influencing the result because the votes aren't genuine. In your case, that's what happened.

I'm not being down on you for it though, because many times I've gone to contests on requests of friends, and voted accordingly. Maybe we all have

[Ceka Cianci]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Your question as to what alts are has been answered but I have something to add here.

There is nothing in the SL rules etc. that prohibits IP addresses from being acquired. Using alts to vote in contests is a common way of cheating in SL and it sounds to me as though the runner of the contest tried to prevent that sort of cheating. I applaud it because often runners of contest don't care whether or not people cheat, which diminishes the pleasure in contests for participants.

The only way to do it is by IP addresses. An unfortunate issue with it is that different people in the same household will be seen as the same person at the computer, and it sounds like that's what happened on this occasion. You just have to live with it, I'm afraid.

Another way of rigging contest results is to enlist the votes of friends - different people, different IPs. It's still an attempt at unfailty influencing the result because the votes aren't genuine. In your case, that's what happened.

I'm not being down on you for it though, because many times I've gone to contests on requests of friends, and voted accordingly. Maybe we all have

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all the club owner had to say was you and these other avatars are alts and using the same ip to be considered disclosure..

because she had shared information of the other accoutns..

if that is what was said..

it doesn't matter if they know each other or not..the sharing is what counts..

[Phil Deakins]

Yep. Names should not have mentioned by the person who was running the contest. The contestant could have been disqualified, and told that it's because alt votes, without the actual names being stated. The owner was probably showing off

Using IPs to ascertain alts in a voting contest is a good thing to do, imo. That's what I was getting at.

[Ceka Cianci]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Yep. Names should not have mentioned by the person who was running the contest. Using IPs to ascertain alts in a voting contest is a good thing to do, imo. That's what I was getting at.

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ya i mean we can see ip's when they connect to our stuff..like streams..we just can't tell who they are by the ip alone..even if there are three or four or however many  of the same ip..there is no way to tell who in the room has them unless there is some sort of connection to an acrtion..that or something saying who is who..

if they are using something that gives out names and matching ip's..they are not sposed to be doing that..

then they are using something that discloses personal information..it's not private information..but it is personal..and there is suposed to be an opt out for that kind of thing if it is being used..

they just had a big deal over this kind of thing with third party viewer changes..let alone the rz quickware and JLU stuff last summer..

LL doesn't want an ip and an avatar name getting related unless there is an opt in or permission given..

it has to be guess work otherwise..

my thing with this person in this case is..how did they know it was those people all on the same ip?

 

either they gave a tell or they didn't have to..and if they didn't have to ..then it's not a good thing..

 

[Phil Deakins]

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Ceka Cianci wrote:

my thing with this person in this case is..how did they know it was those people all on the same ip? 

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Maybe music is streamed from the contest owner's website and anyone who has music on will reveal their IP. A bit of programming can match avatar names to IPs reasonably well.

I'm wondering what's required in a person's viewer to see HTML pages in SL. If most people have whatever it is turned on, then the IP is revealed to the website where the HTML page comes from. The page itself could be on the tiniest of prims that nobody would ever notice.

[Perrie Juran]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

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Ceka Cianci wrote:

my thing with this person in this case is..how did they know it was those people all on the same ip? 

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Maybe music is streamed from the contest owner's website and anyone who has music on will reveal their IP. A bit of programming can match avatar names to IPs reasonably well.

I'm wondering what's required in a person's viewer to see HTML pages in SL. If most people have whatever it is turned on, then the IP is revealed to the website where the HTML page comes from. The page itself could be on the tiniest of prims that nobody would ever notice.

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I believe that required you enabling Media On A Prim.  As I recall there was a lot of flack about the privacy issues with this and JIRA's about it to.

[Ceka Cianci]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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Phil Deakins wrote:

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Ceka Cianci wrote:

my thing with this person in this case is..how did they know it was those people all on the same ip? 

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Maybe music is streamed from the contest owner's website and anyone who has music on will reveal their IP. A bit of programming can match avatar names to IPs reasonably well.

I'm wondering what's required in a person's viewer to see HTML pages in SL. If most people have whatever it is turned on, then the IP is revealed to the website where the HTML page comes from. The page itself could be on the tiniest of prims that nobody would ever notice.

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I believe that required you enabling Media On A Prim.  As I recall there was a lot of flack about the privacy issues with this and JIRA's about it to.

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yep..in greenzone group ..one of our first things we told users was..turn off media and media on a prim and auto connect..

media is what was used for the ip entry time and something in the region was what was used to scan for the avatar and  line up timing the avatar to the time it was scanned with the ip entering..

so a match could be made..then that went to a database to match an ip to other avatar names..then the peorson with the alt detector got the names of all that used sl that had been scanned so far using that ip lol

 

if you have all your media off..and anything that connected outside the grid..their scans failed to line up anything ..even  if you were on an alt on the same ip..as long as that alt was never scanned with media on and in the database..

 

 

 

 

[Eileen Fellstein]

I also applaud the desire to prevent cheating. Just not the means used (if it was grabbing IP - technically legal or not) and certainly not the way in which it was handled in the end.

But we all live and learn and get better with experience.

I hosted contests and took manual votes for close to a year. I saw much suspicious behavior and lots of votes where the voting was fair in the technical sense but unfair in terms of contest criteria (in other words people didn't cheat in the vote, but they were blatantly ignoring the contest and just voting up their friend)

I actually just paid an extra winner out of my pocket in those cases, as did a few of my collegues at that place. It was a good time to be in SL

In this case they could have arrived at the conclusion they did simply by watching the avatars come and go and the pattern of it. Also some viewers shpow which viewer others are on so you see 5 avatars land in 10 minutes, vote for the same avatar and they all display the same veiwer...It wouldn't necesarily dawn on the person that it could be 5 people switching off. They would just think alt at 1st unless they really thought about it a while.

Someone trying to cheat would be sneakier

[Phil Deakins]

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Eileen Fellstein wrote:

In this case they could have arrived at the conclusion they did simply by watching the avatars come and go and the pattern of it. Also some viewers shpow which viewer others are on so you see 5 avatars land in 10 minutes, vote for the same avatar and they all display the same veiwer...It wouldn't necesarily dawn on the person that it could be 5 people switching off. They would just think alt at 1st unless they really thought about it a while.

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That would depend on the type of contest. Most contests take place in a short space of time - "Best in Blue" in a club, for instance (I won one of those once ). For some unknown reason, I imagined that the OP's contest is one that lasts days - photos, for instance. For those, it wouldn't be practical to watch it 24/7.

On a similar note, I had some camping chairs in my store for a few months, and I did not want them to be abused, either by one person occupying more than one chair by using an alt, or by returning to camp, with an alt, too soon after finishing a session (there was a maximum amount of time that a camper could camp in one session). I once threw 5 avatars off that were being operated by one person, and he'd have occupied the other 3 chairs if they became vacant. I arrived at the conclusion that those 5 were one person by viewing profiles. It was very far from conclusive but it turned out to be right in that case.

I wrote the system so that an av couldn't camp again until a certain period of time had elapsed since last camping. The period was determined by the length of time they'd camped in the previous session. One time, I saw an av arrive and get on a chair right after another av had vacated it and left, after reaching the maximum time allowed in one session. Again, using the profiles, I decided that they were the same person, so I unseated her and the first one came back to discuss it with me. It turned out that they were sisters, and one was on a visit to the other. They were actually using different computers. I became friends with first of them and I believe I was told the truth.

So operator eyeballs can often arrive at correct conclusions without the use IPs, but, all-in-all, I'd prefer to rely on IPs, since it's quicker and very clear. It's not totally accurate but it's a lot more accurate than relying on profiles, timing, and such, which is what I had to do.

[Koltari]

In some countries including mine (or for specific ISPs) IPs that are given to people are not static, meaning - that if you disconnect and reconnect your router you may get a different IP.  It can be done by restarting your modem/router, renewing IP via windows settings, etc...And then you add people living in the same house, campus and what nots.

The data is collected and used without proper knowledge on how IP adresses are handeled. The base of any decisions derived from this IP data is flawed and can't be trusted. But in any case just makes the one using such data look bad.

[Phil Deakins]

Yes, that's a difficulty when relying on IPs, but on-the-whole, it's more reliable than looking at profiles - imo

If it does matter, as it did for me with the camping chairs, then IPs are better than any other method.

On the side: While writing the post that included the camping experience, I decided to put a couple of chairs back out again, which I've now done. It had crossed my mind in the last couple of days, anyway.

[Ceka Cianci]

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Koltari wrote:

In some countries including mine (or for specific ISPs) IPs that are given to people are not static, meaning - that if you disconnect and reconnect your router you may get a different IP.  It can be done by restarting your modem/router, renewing IP via windows settings, etc...And then you add people living in the same house, campus and what nots.

The data is collected and used without proper knowledge on how IP adresses are handeled. The base of any decisions derived from this IP data is flawed and can't be trusted. But in any case just makes the one using such data look bad.

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here is where it gets really crazy with IP's also..after someone is scanned and thier avatar name and ip were put into the database..and say they did get a new ip when they log onto the internet or however they get one....

if they were to get scanned while using other ip's

those ip's would line up with that user and also with every avatar that used it  that had been scanned and the alt family would grow..so new ip's would be added opening up more chances of a false positives..

so the bigger the system got the more unreliable it became lol

[Melita Magic]

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Bentley Gandt wrote:

I know this may sound strange, but I as with a serious note.

A friend was particpating in a photo Contest, and was doing very well, the person who was running the contest, decided that my friend was cheating by using alts to vote for him, myself my wife(sl and rl) and son (rl) where named as a alt. In my household there are 3 different people who play SL and we all use the same internet connection. I also know of other homes where more than 1 person is on SL. A few of our friends do know that we are different people.

I wonder how many homes have multiple players. I have heard of inworld software that can be used to detect "Alt's" but that is flawed my case proves

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If a sim is still using that software they are breaking TOS.

I do not recommend using in world media streams unless you know the other people and trust them, or are alone in the sim.

I run media streams in some of my parcels but I have never and will never use any tracking things like that. There is a small chance someone visiting could be wearing a portable one but supposedly the big one was disabled in SL and any  use of any of those is breaking Tos...so it's more rare than it was at the height of the "shall not be named tracking device" debacle.

[Melita Magic]

So, no media on a prim ever - but doesn't use of search in viewer 2 and up, require the internet to be turned on within SL?

I don't snoop into anybody else's alts and I doggone well expect the same courtesy but I know some people are nosey parkers.

[Ceka Cianci]

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Melita Magic wrote:

So, no media on a prim ever - but doesn't use of search in viewer 2 and up, require the internet to be turned on within SL?

I don't snoop into anybody else's alts and I doggone well expect the same courtesy but I know some people are nosey parkers.

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you don't need media or anything in that section to use search..that's in network under java and cookies and stuff like that..

always  use your web browser vs the inworld browser..

third party viewer's have media and stream filters that will show the url before it connects giving the option to let it connect or not.. so that helps..but media on a prim there is no filter for..

LL doesn't have media filters on their viewers..the reason i heard was that they don't have media on a prim filter..

there is an option in some viewers that you can uncheck "Play media attached to other avatars"

 

also as far as the big program being disabled..all LL did was ban the creators and removed the programs that were under fire..

the database is still out there somewhere and could have been sold or uploaded for free for all we know..

the threat is still a very real one..

my green zone group chat still pops up once in awhile with people that have had their huds go off on things...

sometimes it is old lingering prims from the old program or scripts that are no good..

but there are still programs that are out there right now..

one thing i would really look out for is things like sploders that require some sort of permission  or answer of yes or no to play them and anything else ..

there are sploders as well as what they call bot scanners  that look for bots and will use the ip to match up two avatars getting on a system with the same ip..

i'm waiting for the day when me and my husband go to a club and someone calls me a bot or my husband a bot and tells me he is my alt or tells him i am his..

i'm not gonna make a big deal of it right then and there..i'll just make an  AR and right after that get with the GZ group  to check the place out and make sure they were guessing from the stream ..because if there is a scanner there..we will find it hehehe

[Feldspar Millgrove]

When you are listening to streaming music (or other media) in Second Life, you are actually connecting directly to someone's server.  Their server is not part of, not under the control of, Second Life.  It is controlled by the person who is providing the music/media.  The way that the Internet works is by IP Address.  When you listen to streaming music, you are telling someone your IP Address.  That's just how the Internet works.

Now that you've given your IP Address to someone, nothing stops them from noticing that the same IP Address is being used by some other people (in your household, or whatever).