Warning! Self-replicating Land Scanner on many sims!

After tracking what appears to be a land-scanner through 10+ sims, I decided that landowners have the right to know that their land may be having a stealth land scanner constantly zoom through it.

I will not be revealing the creator/owner name (same person). You can figure it out for yourself. PLEASE DO NOT POST IT HERE, that is against forum rules.

Facts:
- Temporary on rez
- Phantom
- Invisible
- 2 1cm x 1cm x 1cm cubes linked
- name: "lb v2"
- either self-replicating, or something else keeps rezzing them
- parnent prim contains script "new script"
- child prim contains scripts, "lb checker" and "lb test autodie"
- moves around between discrete locations: 64,64,400 - 192,64,400 - 192,192,400
- is not detectable / returnable in About Land since it is temporary on rez
- Seen in Varney, Clara, Taber, Natoma, Boardman, Lusk, Perry, and Stillman so far
- Lindens have been contacted

Thank Linden for 1.6's land tools when we can see the objects on our land!

I am sincerely hoping that this is an experiment gone wrong. However, from the dodgy nature of how it wants to avoid detection, I'm not so confident in that assessment.

This may or may not be related to 3k ping spikes I've been getting in Varney for the past couple weeks.

I'm not saying anymore. Just the facts. Just a heads up because we deserve to know what is going on our land.


EDIT:

For people just tuning in, here's what Customer Service said:


Got off the phone with Customer Service - who was very professional and raised a few legit thoughts.

Thank you very much to the Lindens (whose names I'll omit) who have been working on this problem and are continuing to examine this issue.

...

My main concern has been that of the Categorical Imperative - if lots of people were doing this, it would grind SL to a halt. The Linden I spoke to on the phone expressed the stance of LL that currently it's not being seen as a big impact or violation into privacy. Should, however, it get to that point, whether by one player or a collective set of data miners, then a solution would have to be taken.

The fact that LL is looking for a technological solution I believe is the way to go. It's tough to dictate behavior, and it's much easier to simply take people's ability to grief away & to empower residents to stop it.

Individual issues:
- 1.6: The land tools won't stop these from coming onto your land. They may/may not aid in detection. As players, we should lobby for including temporary on rez items in the land detection scheme.
- Worm: It looks like these objects are not self-replicating, but originate from one or multiple central spammers. This evades the worm policy. (Also, the TOS policy really is gauged more for Internet-type worms). For this issue, I raised the concern that new thoughts on what a worm / virus is should be considered.
- Scripts to stop this: The script discussed would likely be considered spamming a player, even if it was limited to one per object.
- Global Attacks: This avoids being considered a global attack because at the moment the use of resources is small.

...

So, basically, what we're dealing with here is actions that are riding the crest of the rules, but aren't quite defined. I've asked that this be appealed, and LL has stated that they are looking into technological fixes for this.

I would still encourage everyone to speak out on their opinions of this in a civil manner.

For the record, again, I have nothing against Pete Fats - I was surprised to see his name attached to this. I do have a problem with his scripts, though.

What we can do:
- Voice your opinion
- Stand up and state clearly that we want land owner rights to privacy and non-interference
- Try and get proof that these are lagging the server
- Try and get proof that there is an excessive number on the sim
- Lobby for a rule that these kind of scanners should have to be non-temp-on-rez.
- Lobby that current rules of worms should include this kind of invasive script as a violation

What NOT to do:
- Take any form of retaliation. This is just sinking to the Lowest Common Denominator.

I'm going to post this post in the beginning so new readers to the thread will get the response by LL right away.

Hiro.... do you know of any in Stillman?

Hiro is just too afraid to admit to the public that a few mutant PoseCubes escaped from his dungeon lab.

Yes.

Also... I did find a "lb v3" on a parcel next to the creator's parcel.

Ack! OK.. I'll have to look for them in Stillman later - hopefully they aren't on my land.

There was a thread going about something that sounds very similar.

Hundreds (Thousands) of tiny scripted objects named "LB 2.5 " flying at 400 meters.

If they are indeed high altitude land scanners, they are apparently ok by the Lindens, not violating any rules in and of themselves.

It's apparently alright to make use of market info in an efficient way by buying low priced land before anyone else finds out the parcels are for sale.

Pouncing on someone's mistake when pricing a parcel or intervening in a poorly handled transaction is probably not cool but just having land scanners doesn't mean those activities are taking place.

If someone is putting land for sale at a below normal price they are probably eager to sell so the fast reaction made possible by the land scanner benefits the seller as well as the buyer.

A person wanting to buy a particular plot because it is crucial to the completion of a particular project can find out it is for sale more rapidly with a land scanner that any other way. I can't see anything wrong with that either.

So I can't what the big deal about naming names is, it's not any different than saying that Cubey Terra flew a plane through your land.

You can find invisible objects by enabling <SHOW OBJECT BEACONS> under the <VIEWS> menu. Each vertical red line indicates a single prim or a linked set (objects.) Fly up to 400m and look around for these red lines... where a horizontal line intersects the vertical line is the object's location. You have to be in edit-mode to select invisible objects.

Dont' know why you mention my name. To continue the comparison, I don't lag people's sims and I don't fly hundreds of planes through everybody's sim all at once. This is very different.

Off topic for a sec...

But it'd be really cool if you could, wouldn't it? I'd kinda like to see that.

OK, back to topic now.

There's a HUGE difference, which seems to have eluded you.

I just did a scan through parts of Stillman and tried using view objects and view transparent - neither of which worked. There were plenty of these objects in Stillman on my property and others, including what appeared to be Linden land.

I just found the bastards in Kojin too.
Extremely hard to find.

I dont care if i get banned for telling the truth. More power to me for being right!
This is info that the community needs to know.

These objects on my Kojin land are owned by Pete Fats.

They are temp on rez and rez a child just before they die, and run around scanning for public land. Extremely hard to find without a good scanner. Flies around at 400m, moves all the time and derezzes. Obviously made as stealthy as possible.

If this is what grinds my sim to a halt, at 30 mins past the hour every hour, it has got to go!
Anyone else that have these in their sims that experience the same?

I haven't run any formal benchmark, but if it IS a land scanner, it shouldnt be terribly laggy. llGetLandOwnerAt doesnt trigger any events. It is a simple data read. If it doesn't contain a truckload of scripts doing it in parallel, it shouldn't be stressing the sim.
If you get lag spikes, check your alt-1 dialog and see how many milliseconds the sim is spending on scripts ("Run Tasks".

I found many in Anton, owned by the same person that has already been named in this thread. I think his behavioir is horribly irresponsible and he should be immediately punished by the lindens (i personally see the extremes for a ban here) and all his thingies removed from the database, given his rez date he is sure not a clueless newbie that did a little error.

A simple and responsibly made landscanner wouldn't cause lag... But if you have a couple dozen of the things constantly self replicating every minute, it would cause lag... quite a bit of lag...

I seem to recall hearing about fish that got banned from the entire grid because they self-replicated in an uncontrolled and lag inducing manner.

The Lindens apparantly don't care about these objects, so you are all just jealous of Pete Fats.

i care nothing about who does it, what i care about is that he is properly hunted down and punished.
I just counted more than 50 of those things replicating over the land I OWN and he asked no permission for it. He is advocating the right to systematically lag other resident's property to achieve his own goals and i doubt anyone has such a right. His behavioir is clearly a griefing activity and as such should be punished.

I.6 will allow you to identify objects on your land. Once this patch is released, I am sure alot of clandestine objects will be returned.

Thats not cool, it seems like a land scanner hell! Maybe if you bring it to his attention he can alter his scanners to be less of a resource drain if that is indeed his doing. Other then that I think Hank hit the nail on the head, you can't do anything and LL won't either. So unless you can find a TOS violation its a moot point.

o an to Cuby Terra, I think your name was used as an example of someone prestegious flying over player owned land in a prim made plane. = prims on someones land. Not as someone who is griefing.

keep up the good work we support you!

I was feeling really left out of the high altitude stealth scanner club so I built my own. I have installed auto spawners in every mainland sim. Don't bother trying to kill them as each spawner is monitored frequently by the spawners in the neighboring sims and if no response is received, they send a replacement spawner to a new location in the abandoned sim. So unless you can coordinate the simultaneous deletion of up to five spawners in 5 adjacent sims, you really are just wasting your time.

The spawners send out only enough sensors to do what I need to do. They don't listen to chat because that would violate the terms of service and I'm a community oriented guy. I can't tell you what they are scanning for as I'm planning a new service based on it for the benefit of all humankind.

Thanks to everyone who is hosting my spawners and sensors, I couldn't do it without your implied consent.

It's obviously not against TOS since the Lindens haven't done anything about it. Right?

haha that's great.

by the way.......
1) anybody know these are land scanners or what they're doing or is that a guess?
2) any proof they're causing lag beyond the normal and if yeah how much?

It would be a violation if the script was predatory. For example, trading land with a friend at $0L or $1L and before your friend claims it, a script grabs it. That happened to me in my noob days, and the Lindens were quick to return the land, The scripter was offline but obviously warned, given the IM I recieved later.

The Lindens however are not highly concerned with public land scanners, because each land owner has the option of using autoreturn.