Valhallena
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Posts posted by Valhallena
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but um... when are they going to fix the new in-world search?
cause, yeah...
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2 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:
You'd be insane to use a product from a creator like that- in my opinion.
I'm not insane, I just wasn't well informed, and one can't rely on a site like sl secrets for good information. I saw his stuff on the marketplace, saw that it was popular and just bought it thinking well, if it's on the mp with all these reviews, how bad can it be? (Btw, turns out I did purchase the sploder from the MP and did leave a negative review, he found a way to flag it and have it removed). I did manage to say something on his free stuff, it doesn't have the same effect but eh, its something.
I hope with this new financial group that has acquired linden labs, that they will find a way to rate businesses in world, the way we do on the MP.
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5 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:
Let's get to my confusion next, but first, I'm pretty confident that collection and sharing of IP addresses per se was never against the SL Terms of Service. In fact it used to be the "wild west" until a huge, messy, protracted scandal over the "Redzone" product and its creator, a literal RL criminal. Anybody for whom this is new territory may want to brush up with the help of Inara Pey's contemporaneous blog posts. I don't know if the relevant SL Universe threads are preserved anywhere, but that's where a lot of the action took place. Besides addressing Redzone specifically, the Lab modified the Community Standards, with the relevant language still intact and highlighted below:
This was supposed to prevent any devices from detecting and revealing alt identities by any means. Third party viewers also introduced media filters to defeat the easiest way(s) to use IP addresses to detect likely alts. And for better or worse, there are still commercial devices available in SL that exchange IP addresses detected by these and other means to ban likely alts without revealing identity (although it's like pulling teeth to get them to admit that's what they're doing, so it's probably considered a TOS grey area).
The Marketplace description of the product under discussion in this thread claims:
Note the emphasis on disclosure.
Now I don't know what it really does, but if it collects IP addresses of region visitors, the subject of "media filters" arises naturally because media (especially a particular form of parcel media) is the easiest way to collect that data.
All that said, it seems you're only claiming that the product owner's IP address is collected during registration. That seems unusual, but I think we all agree this is an "unusual" product.
Okay, so now on to my confusion. Just to make it easier, this is the blog article we're discussing (I don't see any reason not to link it), and the relevant passage:
I completely agree that it's weird of him to care about your bots and their placement. I could make up some bogus just-so story about their proximity to the sploder somehow affecting performance of his scripts... or maybe he thought visitors would think your bots were collecting sploder winnings and he didn't want that to diminish how effective his device appears to be in defeating bots. Or something.
What I couldn't follow is, if the other bots were his, why would he think he'd risk a ban, even if he thought your bots were unregistered? I mean, if these other bots were his, why wouldn't he have registered them as scripted agents, same as yours? Is it somehow to his advantage to boost traffic everywhere his bots roam? Or... maybe some club owners track their own traffic statistics closely enough to recognize that these visitors don't generate traffic so must be bots, therefore why pay for this supposed bot-defeating product?
So... maybe? I'm just not getting this epiphany, open-and-shut case that these visitors are his bots. I'm thinking "the same people coming in over and over again" might just be the usual bunch of sploder-hunters equipped with one of this creator's other products (which incidentally insures that these sploders aren't intended to draw actual participants, only traffic).
He wouldn't register his bots as scripted agents because there would be no traffic to be made off of them, rendering his product inferior to other sploders out there. Think of it as killing two birds with one stone, the customer gets the traffic they want and he collects the lindens.
Also, yes- he may have a site (as do other competing sploders companies) that tell customers where the largest pots are, however there tends to be a diversity in the people with the other sploder companies, but the reason they are not as big as what the voodoo sploder is is because the other ones collect an upfront 10-20% fee when you pay the sploder to feed the crowd, whereas voodoo's gave the illusion that they collected nothing . I kept getting the same limited-english speakers or ones that didn't speak at all. I sometimes had other events that required people to wear a certain color to win more lindens or do something else as simple as dance, but because their English was limited and/or bots, they never even participated, they all just focused on the sploder and would teleport to the same spots always (a real indication of a macro).
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I have filed the report in world on a linden lab land as suggestion, thanks to those who suggested that. I will try tomorrow to speak to a LIVE CHAT representative also to see what else they can so, or suggest I do to help end this man's fraud.
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14 hours ago, Adamburp Adamczyk said:
I've used Voodoo products for over 6 years and never had an issue, their security device has *never* triggered my media filter, at ANY place that uses it. So no, it doesn't use the "media exploit". If you want to see for yourselves visit my sim Mystery Caye with your filter set to on, you'll only see my 80's stream.
In terms of "IP logging" for a sploder it's determined by each individual sploder owner whether to use this setting or not, in order to stop a person using a billion alts to "game the system". And the Sploder owner does NOT see any personal info.
One thing that Is important to know about the sploders: when a person clicks the sploder to enter, and the "verify" function is in use, then they get a CLEAR warning message that "clicking verify WILL log your IP address", in various languages. This puts the choice whether to enter or not FIRMLY in the hands of the user. So hardly "IP farming" when the user is prompted to make a CLEAR and INFORMED decision.
So yes GDPR compliant too - as the user has to give CLEAR consent to enter.
No one here said he media exploits, I said he exploits his created sploder, so what you are saying is irrelevant.
No one said the sploder owner (the non creator/buyer) sees personal info, so again irrelevant.
Lastly, if a person purchases his sploder product to use for their company, your IP is automatically logged by him when you have to register your product, and that is NOT by consent.
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9 hours ago, Karly Kiyori said:
Well, well, well. A crazy coincidence happened today.
I was searching for a parcel of mainland to buy and I was in particular looking for a waterfront parcel that had a connection to plenty of protected sailing. So for each parcel I looked at, I walked from there to the protected sea to make sure I wasn't hitting any banlines or security orbs.
Well, at one of them I did hit an orb. A few moments later I got an IM from the man himself asking what I was doing. The parcel where the orb was did not belong to him, but I presume the orb was one he'd made & sold. He knew exactly which parcel I'd just been bounced from.
Nosey bugger.
Wow... that is one hell of a coincidence and creepy. Like, what does it matter to him who was on another person's land that does not belong to him? What a effing weirdo!
So gross.🤮
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5 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:
This thread raises so many questions. It's weird enough that the creator would put themself as admin on orbs they sell, but then to actually respond to intrusion events like some hired security service... I really don't know what to make of that. They need a better hobby?
Also, scouting out the threat of scripted security devices between a prospective land purchase and protected water... I guess I'd wander the neighborhood a bit, too, so maybe it's not that weird, but if it's really the practice for determining whether a parcel has direct access to the Governor's land, I mean, there are easier ways.
About IP address tracking: It's gross and creepy but it doesn't violate TOS as long as they don't reveal the results in a way that makes it possible for anybody to identify alts. It is however stupidly easy to do (to many visitors) with a pretty simple LSL script, so never assume a landowner doesn't know your alts. (Way back in Redzone days, I posted the basic source code needed, buried in a script intended to help people test whether they were leaking their IP addresses to in-world scripts in the most common way. By now that code has surely been scrubbed by the passage of time - especially because I most likely posted in on SLUniverse.)
Point is, I don't think the IP address argument will convince many people not to buy those products. I'm also a little skeptical about the "botting their own sploders" theory, although it would be incredibly damning in the eyes of customers from whom that creator would be stealing if it's true. I don't have a better theory of why one flock of (registered) bots would be offensive to another flock of (possibly unregistered?) bots, but I also don't quite follow why raising a fuss about the first flock would protect the second. It's not even obvious to me why, if the second flock belonged to that creator, they wouldn't be registered and thus AR-proof. I'm probably confused.
All that said, I can confirm the basis of the other argument: the ban list absolutely does include "vendetta" accounts. I've been on that list (may be still for all I know) and I doubt I've ever touched one of their sploders. (Personally I'd rather all sploders were restricted to registered Skill Gaming regions only, and don't really understand why they're not.) Rather, I was among a chorus of folks criticizing this creator's business practices, years ago and "across the street," which I'm pretty confident was what earned my "vendetta ban" all those years ago.
[ETA: I meant to mention that adding the blog URL to the OP's in-world profile is probably a good idea, but I imagine the suggestion was to put that link on the forums signature, too, which is done somewhere in the forum account profile. I don't use it myself, but I do have it set to show other folk's signatures.]
Yes, you seem confused. You have to re-read that bit again, but I will try to explain it a bit here.
I said: After realizing I no longer had service, I sent him an email asking him why, and he said because he didn't like where I placed my bots (they were by the sploder; it was a small dancing club so everything was practically near the sploder), and I became offended and concerned why it would matter to him. That's when the light switch went off, and I explain how and why. I also explain how unbeknownst to him, my bots were registered and just there as a way to galvanize the crowd, not for traffic inflation.
Back when I started, IP gathering from a third party was illegal. If that has changed, that sucks because it is entrusting a bunch of people who do not necessarily have good intentions of with your location, and in-world identity of you and your alts which we all know can be used as a way to harass one's "game" play.
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10 minutes ago, RowanMinx said:
Clicking links embedded in someone's website is pretty much the same as opening them from those phishing emails. You never know what they might be capturing with a seemingly harmless looking link.
It was one of the automatic button that was the play symbol which automatically played music, but I know what you mean. The whole crash course of the IP thing and why you should always avoid that getting into the wrong hands was from when I went down to the police station about the stalker (that's also when I learned that you can't just file a restraining order on someone who's harassing you on the internet with personal information until they actually reach out and attempt to do you harm lol, you can totally be dead by then) but yeah... this was all 8 years ago and I have no idea of what's changed.
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1 minute ago, MoiraKathleen said:
I've never had a reason to investigate this myself, but is there not something in either the router or modem software that would allow one to change it? Or could one request that through one's ISP, if necessary?
I have no idea, I think I read once that you can just restart your router and it will change your IP, but mine is all the way in the basement and I never tried that suggestion to see.
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7 minutes ago, RowanMinx said:
Also, most home IPs are dynamic today. So what is logged today, means nothing next week.
Mine sticks, and when I was IP ban, on every account of mine I logged into, it didn't allow me to enter the region until they disabled it.
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3 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:
If you were clicking links from someone, he was probably capturing far more than your IP.
Like what? I never downloaded anything from his website or anything. It was a just click to play thing that was embedded on his site.
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Just now, RowanMinx said:
This system has been complained about for years. There is also a free HUD on the MP that informs where they largest pots are so that would explain all.the random people showing up.
I saw lots of complaints about them from sticky websites like virtual secrets but that's the issue, you have no idea what to believe from a site like that and so you just go and try anyway. This is why I think it def would be a good investment for LL to create something that helps with this. I may be a SL'er with a decent amount of years under my belt that won't get scared off the platform like that, but what about new Suzie who's been here for less than a year and wants to have her hand at using this third-party service that sounds so good only to be burned. It's distasteful and can literally send people running for the hills, right off the platform.
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2 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:
I read your blog - yeah, lots of folks complain about that company. I am pretty sure that they do not tell others your IP, but simply block access to regions using their product by any account that is logged in on that IP.
You should know that - assuming you get your internet through a commercial provider -- that someone knowing your IP does NOT tell them specifically where you live (though it might give a very general area), nor can they get any "sensitive information about you like your full government name" from your IP. Some folks might have told you that out of ignorance or to scare you, but it is not true.
No, not anything someone has told me but rather what I had to go through on my own with an online stalker who phished me 8 years ago (this was not someone from SL but a person from another virtual platform). The person used to send links of music and stuff, and me being super naive would just click and listen to the tunes, not knowing that he was logging where I was. Yeah, he found me, I had to get the police involved and everything, but anyway... yeah, people can do more with your IP than you think.
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1 minute ago, LittleMe Jewell said:
How is someone using the knowledge of your IP to disrupt your SL experience?
Side note -- If you listen to music in public places, it isn't that hard for someone to get your IP. I'm pretty sure them getting it is not against the TOS.
I explain it in my blog that is linked on my profile, I won't post it here cause you guys told me that it's against forum rules.
No, I don't listen to music in public spaces, and yes when I read the TOS a few years ago, it was against the rules. They may have changed it, I don't know.
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Welp... I updated my profile on here and my second life profile of my blog link, hopefully that gets some attention.
In all my years on here, I have never been so peeved as to pursue a wrongdoer so relentlessly, I take IP logging and flat out stealing very seriously.
Here's another question, besides reporting in world (which let's face it, that seems to just get ignored often, also do you have to be around the person or their land to report them?), how would you guys go about reporting a "company" on SL that logged your IP sneakily without your consent and now uses it to disrupt your SL experience?
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16 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:
why you think there's the advice : demo///demo.///demo/// if no demo////dont buy ( for demo you can also fill in demo area for buildings/objects)
It's not always about things that can be demo'ed, but rather in world third party services.
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5 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:
Not sure what you mean. The product review allows a consumer the opportunity to rate the quality of a product they have purchased and are not satisfied with. Within it one can rate the company/creator itself if contacting them didn't help resolve the problem.
Arielle, items bought in world and NOT on the second life marketplace have no platform for customers to leave a review.
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9 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:
There is always the Product Reviews when people use them.
Yes, and what about when items are bought in world?
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3 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:
I have said before here that the existence of a reputable and transparent web resource to manage instances of in-world fraud, poor business practices, false advertising, and so forth, would be a great thing.
But such a resource would need to be, as I say, transparent. It would need to establish its credibility by actually investigating such things, and also by giving creators / landlords / service providers an opportunity to respond to complaints.
Without that kind of system of checks, such a site would be nothing more than another version of Virtual Secrets, with no way of knowing whether a complaint was justified, or merely someone with a grudge. Posting such things here on the forum would have exactly this effect: it would, at best, be a case of he said/she said.
I absolutely agree with that. I was hoping for that kind of space, but I guess having that kind of dedicated area on the forums seems too much to ask by our "service providers".
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Oh okay, so people suffer in silence... got it.
Ty for answering. 👍
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Is there a section of the forums where blogs (in specific, blogs that name and shame SL companies of fraudulent and other bad business practices) can be shared?
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As with anything in life, the moment you depend on anything, you open yourself up to disappointment.
I am concerned, but am I losing sleep over it? Nope.
Don't get attached to anything in life, have plans to move on to the next should ***** hit the fan.
I ❤️ Second Life, but it's not the first nor will it be the last.
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I usually just mind my business, but...
in General Discussion Forum
Posted
Well, I'm here to tell you and Inara it's not just cosmetic. It's annoyingly broken in a way that I found super beneficial before. In the upper right hand corner search of the interface, you could just search from there and it would pull up the search screen with the results. Now it brings up the search screen but no results--- you end up having to re-type it and then hope and pray it actually works. It can take several attempts before it actually procs results that make sense. 😔