A way to block Bloodlines players on my Island?

[Cory Toll]

Hello, me and some friends run a freebie place and just about everyday I get reports from players abotu these people spamming bites. it's been happening for years and years and years. Our ban list is nearing the cap (both the region ban list and the land ban list).

 

I beleive there are some products out there for individual avatars to block these spam messages, but what I want something that blocks it entirely. Being a freebie place, we get mostly new comers who don't know whats going on. So while I can't stop all the spammers, I'd at least like to stop these horrible bloodlines peopel from bothering anyone. I'm hoping there's some kind of item I can rez taht blocks their scripts from working. Obliviously, the standard "Don't Allow Scripts" land option doesn't work at all. So yeah, if such a thing exists, i'm hoping someone who has first hand experience with it can talk about how well it works.

[Bobbie Faulds]

I don't know that there is really a way to block them. The best yo can do is have a thing where they land to get the garlic necklace and put up a notice that Bloodlines requests are not allowed and any one asking will be banned.

[LlazarusLlong]

What you really need is:

a} a mechanism to be able to identify those who belong to a specific Group or Groups associated with Bloodlines who attempt to enter your land

and

b) then to eject them automatically

I am sure that would not be beyond the wit of one of our clever forumites.

It would mean that even "well-behaved" members of those Groups would be ejected, but . . . hohum.

.

 

[Perrie Juran]

How about a script which queries BL's Database and then ejects any matches?

[Christhiana]

There's a free system on MP. Search for ban bloodlines. It detects a vampire bite and will inform you as well as ban the player.

[Qie Niangao]

That seems... too good to be true, I guess. That's a quite old product, and so there are several reviews. One of the reviews itself has two comments, one of which seems to suggest (as I'd expected) the most offensive of the spampires have found a way around the detector. I tried to investigate further, but the scripts inside are no-mod (not surprising, I suppose) so I can't really tell what it was trying to do.

The suggestion of scraping the Bloodlines database seems reasonable, as long as it keeps responding.

A more difficult approach would be a bot who is a member of that group so it could search the membership. It's an extra layer of kludginess, though, to have to link scripts with bots, so it's not the first thing to try.

Probably be pretty costly to get somebody to build either of those approaches. (The freebie thing must do something much simpler -- maybe just detect comms between the spampire's attachment and that of the victim -- because it detects the bite attempts, not the mere presence of a spampire group member.)

[Christhiana]

Scraping the bloodlines database would only tell you if someone is registered as a bloodlines player, not if they are a spammer. I'm in that database yet I've never send a bite request to anyone but a couple of friends. I only tried bloodlines for a short while, then I got into building... The approach of the script is to catch anyone who's sending out bite request, I think that would be the best approach still. Maybe there is a way to detect if someone is wearing the bloodlines HUD or the Fangs?

[Qie Niangao]

Interesting quandry. Assuming the freebie thing works (which I kinda doubt, but nonetheless), waiting for a bite request would make it a bit too late to protect newbies. On the other hand, banning bloodline members who are no longer active would strike a bit too soon.

I guess, if a system explained to the bloodlines member why it was banning them, they'd have the clear option of leaving bloodlines if they really wanted to be on that land. Not sure that's what the landowner wants, but I suppose that might indeed be better than even one newbie getting an unsolicited bite request, ever.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

Interesting quandry. Assuming the freebie thing works (which I kinda doubt, but nonetheless), waiting for a bite request would make it a bit too late to protect newbies. On the other hand, banning bloodline members who are no longer active would strike a bit too soon.

I guess, if a system explained to the bloodlines member why it was banning them, they'd have the clear option of leaving bloodlines if they really wanted to be on that land. Not sure that's what the landowner wants, but I suppose that might indeed be better than even one newbie getting an unsolicited bite request, ever.

---

The problem there is we don't know if the turd ever cleans his Database, or as the song goes, you can check out any time but you can never leave.

The other question here is with these so called 'bite detectors.'   How can it know it's a bloodlines request without intercepting the message (can that be done with LSL?) and could that be considered a violation of the TOS against monitoring private conversations?

[Qie Niangao]

The bloodlines curse has been with the grid for a long time, long enough that their scripts are likely to rely on detectable messaging between the HUD (or fangs, or whatever) and the victim's bite-mark attachment. No competent scripter would do that today, of course, but back when that freebie bite detector was new, all that would be required is knowledge of what channel the messaging uses. (That's not a trivial search, though, unless it was easy to guess, or widely known -- or an inside job.) I can't think how else it could work, but then I never saw inside.

Seems a stretch to apply a rule about monitoring private conversation to transmission of that bite bit.

[Christhiana]

Another thing... If I remember correctly someone gets added to the bloodlines database as soon as they are bitten. So even people who have never played Bloodlines can be in the database by accidently accepting a bite request. I think a big portion of SL is in that database. Also a lot of SL residents have tried the bloodlines system at one time or another. So banning people for being in there might leave you with a very empty sim...

[BarcodeBrian]

Remember that the Garlic Necklace was created for a reason.

And since a player does not permanently leave their database, note that they can be hidden from its disclosure because the necklace works both with the unbitten AND active players when activated: someone not yet bitten should not get solicited, and someone in the database will not show up nor be able to bite. When deactivated, both cases are reverted.

There is no harm in requiring someone in the database to wear and activate a garlic necklace while on your property other than their perception of indignity (some will look at it that way, some will not). Neither will it hurt to suggest others wear and activate them to prevent the solicitation.

[Qie Niangao]

Doesn't experience keys work the other way around? The player giving you permission to do certain things like animate your avatar.

One other solution would be to deactivate the option for visitors to run scripts on your land. Crude but effective.

[Qie Niangao]

Most attached scripts are able to continue running on no-script land because they call llTakeControls. (They don't have to actually use any controls.) It is possible to turn off all scripts at the sim level, but that affects all scripts, not selective to owner.

I'm not completely sure Experiences would work, but just to be clear what I was thinking: one of the Experience-granted permissions is PERMISSION_ATTACH so maybe one could discretely(?) embed the "garlic necklace" script in some other attachment required by the region's Experience. I think you'd need to be sure each visitor agreed to enroll in the experience, and monitor that the attachment isn't removed while still in the sim, but all that seems common practice anyway for game-based Experiences.

[Christhiana]

I think hiding the garlic script in another object and make everyone use it is not a very nice way to go about this. Wearing the garlic necklace puts you in another BL database and I'm sure not everyone will appreciate this. I even think this kind of behaviour can get you to have your experience key revoked (and it should!).

[Qie Niangao]

---

Christhiana wrote:

Wearing the garlic necklace puts you in another BL database and I'm sure not everyone will appreciate this.

---

Oh, yeah, I remember that now. Glad I didn't go so far as to test it!

Kinda doubt it would cause an Experience to be revoked, if the underlying opt-out behaviour of the Bloodlines database didn't get all those accounts banned. But yeah, it would be a dreadful mistake to taint Experience users with Bloodlines, and ironically in an attempt to protect them from the scourge..

[BarcodeBrian]

So don't hide it. Limit it to those that are already in the database, so their biting abilities are disabled until it is deactivated.

Doesn't any reputable business also keep databases of users, even if it includes do not contact, or banned, etc.?