Spy Vendors?

'Bob' does not need to know everything about your customers. 'Bob' does not care wether he is told everything about your customers. For 'Bob' already knows how you spend your dollars. Yes friends, the slackmaster himself knows how you spend your money. So reach into those pockets of yours. It doesn't matter how little you have, it doesn't matter how much you have. Just reach into those pockets, pull out your wallet and place your hands on the radio. Praise 'Bob', the bringer of slack.

'Bob' does not want your demographics, 'Bob' already has your demographics. For 'Bob' is the conspiracy behind the conspiracy. 'Bob' wants to save you from commercialism by taking all your money and using it for the purpose of 'Bob'. 'Bob' will give you salvation or triple your money back.

The Xists are coming my friends and only 'Bob' can save you from 'Bob'. The end of the world is nigh for 'Bob' will smite all nonbelievers with the Stark Fist of Removal. Send all your money to 'Bob' or he will 'Bob' you out. REPENT NOW!

Brought to you by spokespeople for JR 'Bob' Dobbs. For Bobness sake. 'Bob'

Nooooo! Not with LSL! You can NOT get an IP with LSL (to my knowledge).

I'm saying you go through the Streaming Music, which is found in About Land - Options

You put in the URL of your server, and have it loaded up with shoutcast or some sort, then you watch the IP's come in (since SL basicly uses a winamp like connectivity where each client connects directly to the server).

You could also setup your own program (not written in LSL) to watch that specific port on your server for IP connections and keep a log (you can probably do this with shoutcast as well, I'm not sure).

It's not a matter of using LSL... it's a matter of using shoutcast... or a properly configured Apache server.

The music URL mechanics are simple, there is a small single purpose web browser in the SL client that looks at that URL for a streaming music source, and plays it.
Now let's say we have a PHP script that catches the IP address of the user, and the time, Pacific that they approach, couple this with an LSL script to get the detected user's key and name. Make the script URL a form variable listing the global coordinates, and you have a way to track a person down to 512 square meters.

This isn't pure LSL to do it, but it is possible.

[edited to clarify slightly]

Well, what about Bob ??????
BTW Bill Murray was recently voted in the top 5 of 50 all time smart asses

ummm... if you don't want your IP tracked then don't get on the internet... plain and simple

tracking in SL is merely virtual personal information...

until someone proves that RL information can be tracked through what "JohnDoeAVName" is doing then its perfectly legit

...

with that said...

i don't think people are too worried about linking what they buy in SL to their RL identities... i think its more the fact that they may not want their AVName associated to a purchase, etc that could affect their SL identity / reputation.

if this is the case then nothing "Bob" is doing would get him in trouble in RL, however, if this is a concern for so many people then some organization in SL needs to be formed to control the privacy of SLers and enforce regulations on things such as what "Bob" is doing

just my thoughs...

Ok Shoutcast I can understand, but the specific topic was Vendors Collecting Data which to my knowledge VENDORS are simple devices that email information about a sale from SL and in some Cases back to a vendor. These are soely written in LSL, thus the information cannot be contrived in the manor of the orginal post.

The Shoutcast/Apache server aspect is a seperate issue entirely and needs to be addressed as such.

Keep on topic here and on the focal point of the discussion Otherwise this issue with Shoutcast needs to be addressed in its own thread and not confuse the actual topic at hand here.

K thx

Shadow

aye sales data is indeed a good thing for shop owners to see what they have sold and when..(and ect...)

It's a built-in bookie(bookkeeper)

Greetings my friend. We are all interested in the future for that is where we will die, will spend the rest of our lives. So remember my friend, that future events such as these will affect you in the future.



This is because 'Bob' does not exist. 'Bob' is a joke. But 'Bob' is the joke that you can believe in. You have to love 'Bob' but 'Bob' does not have to love you. 'Bob' is not only God but 'Bob' is the founder of the Church of the SubGenius.

'Bob' does not care about your sins. 'Bob' won't die for your sins because 'Bob' is not the son of God. 'Bob' won't die for your sins, 'Bob' won't forgive you for your sins because he doesn't give a ****. All 'Bob' cares about is that 'Bob' will JUSTIFY your sins. 'Bob' will justify your sins and use them as part of his plan.

Come, fly with teeth of the wind. Share my wings.

What if the vender's sending this information as well as sales data, I've heard people talk about proximity to their venders as far as tracking, some do have visitor counters that track more than just sales. One could track from something as harmless as a for sale sign for a piece of land, or mall floor pieces if the scripting's done the right way.

I wish we had better logging and a searchable ledger for our sales that went back at least a year. It allows merchants to provide better customer service and to track trends to better guage what direction to take their product lines, and so on. I keep records of every skin I've ever sold. When someone comes to get a tatt added more than a month after they bought the skin I still need to be able to verify that they legitimately own a skin and which one they have. If I couldn't verify it I'd have to refuse to service them. If we had better logging and the ability to search the data I could provide even better service. If I upgraded a skin texture I could easily find out everyone who owns that skin and give them a new one. I don't do that now because it would be too much hassle to compile a list from my notecard based sales records.

That said, I refuse to use supermarket bonus cards in RL. I think the grocery store should be only in the business of selling food, not collecting data for the sole purpose of selling it to third parties. I'm also dead set against RFID tags. Data collection can be useful and it can help a store provide better service. It can also be used for much less honest purposes. In SL I have no problem whatsoever with merchants collecting whatever data they need in order to provide the best service.

I don't really care if someone knows what I'm buying, what I'm spending, what I'm selling or what I'm earning.

Makes me wonder how many people are buying things they're ashamed of if this is such a concern.

Exactly.

Why would you want your purchases or the fact that you visited a place to be secret from the owner or retailer?

Kind of strange.

AH so thats why...LMAO

Little Miss or Mr Innocent busted for buying a "Play with my >>>>" animation...LMAO ROTFLMAO

The flavor of todays Drink is "Nieve One" sure to put the fear of everyone in you!!

Shadow

Well I did an inworld search for Bob Biber, he must have quit SL.
Damnit, after reading this thread I wanted to buy some data from him.

I use Moopf's vendor system for some of my items. I think it is so neat to be able to go to a website and track whats was sold, who bought it, when they bought it, and where they bought it. If I wasn't so lazy I could use that data to better market my product.

I have no problems with other's using this type of data to better market their products. If Bob wants to know my shopping habbits, he is welcome to track them. I would draw the line when this data is used for spam, That would be totally unacceptable.
I suspect anybody using such data to negatively impact the users would not be in business too long.

Anshe,

This is actually an extremely interesting topic. It does ultimately come down to more than an issue of trust. As designed, I think the vendor systems that provided web based sales analysis are valuable, but there are definitely security and privacy concerns that must be addressed now, or they will be very difficult to address in the future.

I think one very tangible way concerns about it could be mitigated would be for the developer to use encryption on sensitive fields of data that can only be viewed by the seller (ie...purchaser name, item purchased, etc..). There are creative ways this can be done so that the developer/system admin does not have any ability to view this info, but the system has to be designed that way.

It involves giving up some convenience as well, since it would involve having to enter an additional "password" to view the sensitive info, and would mean that if that key were lost,you would never be able to retrieve that data. I do think that is a reasonable trade off, and that this is something that can and should be done.

Additionally, privacy controls should be added. You should be able to purge data stored about your sales at any time, and you should be able to opt out of certain features if you don't want them. For example, notification features that notify you of who purchased the items are nice, but you should be able to opt out of having this data actually permanently stored.

On a smaller scale, it was something I faced with SLUniverse's forums when I first launched. I did not want to have a database filled with passwords, because I knew that there was an off chance that someone would use the same password for the site as they do for SL. I decided from the ground up to go with storing encrypted passwords that I have no ability to decrypt. If you lose your password, it can be reset, but the stored password can never be retrieved, as it is one way encryption - the stored password is meaningless. To the end user this is all transparent, and their privacy is protected.r

Great issue to raise, it definitely needs to be addressed now that we are moving into a new level of item sales with the emergence of web based selling as well.

Mmmm, this is not about one retailer you bought from know what you bought from him/her. It is about one person knowing about *everything* you bought from *any* retailer. And not only about you, but about other people in SL too. It is about one person have access to detailed data about whole economy and what sells where for how much, who buys it, how much is sold, what your consumer habit are and so on. And this person may turn around and pass that information on to whomever.

The one retailer you buy some item from just know about purchase you did there, which only show one tiny fraction of your consumer life. But Bob will know about every purchase you did, when you did it, where you did it etc.

Most of the people who buy my stuff aren't exactly secretive about it. They want you to know exactly which car they bought, and they'll rez 10 of them on their lawn and put a picture of it in their profile if that's what it takes!

If this concern relates to web-based selling of SL items, then perhaps a solution is to offer people a script package they can run on their own bit of web space somewhere to do the actual selling. Let a centralized site run the searchable catalog of items, but link over to the retailer's own site for the actual purchase to be done. Web space with PHP capability is fairly standard and cheap these days, after all.

Gosh darn it, now you've made me want to get back to my own much-delayed mall revamp!

ah ok Anshe, now that you have defined it clearer for me I understand better.

As for Tracking in a Mall environment what a person buys from others via scarfing the information from either chat or proximity and or activation of a sales script in another vendor that is NOT your own is totaly wrong.

However, As a store owner I think it is fair to record a purchase made through my vendor to keep accurate records of MY stock and My product as these are invaluable tools to control what needs to stay for sale and what needs to be removed. But that is general tracking data.

However, Like in RL Walmart cannot place sensors in Kmart to track how many people come in and out but Walmart can put those same sensors in their own RL store to track its traffic flow and percentage of the populace that frequents Walmarts establisment.
Thus same should be said for SL.

So with that said...

Individuals owned Vendor...allowed to track sales from that vendor for verification as per what Chip Mentioned earlier. Typicaly controled by either touch or voice command but ultimately controlled by the payment.

Not Owned by Individual...is spying pure and simple. Ie if Joe biber is tracking the sales from "MY Vendors" he has no right to that information as its between my customers and myself.


anyway thats just my two cents.

Shadow

Anshe,

One more thing - I will say that although you raised a great issue, your poll is an example of using a poll to get the exact response you are looking for, by wording the answers a certain way. Your answers are all leading, and skewed toward your position that this is a problem.

I'll have to make up my own answer I guess:

() If it bugs you - don't use bobs vendor - there are plenty of others, or make your own.

I agree..
I have a tracker on my vendors so that I dont get ripped off. It doesnt track nothing but what a certain person bought. I have been scammed before where "known customers" will IM me telling me that their weapon doesnt work. I give them a replacement after finding their name in my account history. The problem is, Im not sure if that is the product they bought (I have a couple of producs the same price). So viola, they instantly have two products

If you dont like this "idea" then dont buy from me.

The issue is not one vendor using them to track their own sale. This is the scenario:

1) User makes a vending system that tracks sales on a web site, and sells/gives away this vendor for other others to use.
2) Other people use these vending machines to sell their items. The sales histories of each of these people is stored in a database (who bought from them, what they bought, how much they paid).
3) The database contains the data of ALL of the vending machines that use this service - so if you have 100 different people using it, you have sales data for 100 different people being stored.

It is point # 3 where the privacy issue comes in. The developer/sys admin of the web site has full access to all that data. They can say they have no intentions of using the data for anything but aggregating it, but it comes down to an issue of trust. We all know what they say about good intentions. Calling them spy vending machines is adding some hysterical rhetoric to the issue, but there is definitely a valid point and cause for concern as more and more sales information is moved into the hands of other players. We implicitly trust Linden Lab, but how much do you know another player, even an established one?

$$$ sigh

Pretty simple really ... I use my own vending system.

hehe .. So if anyone wants a single server, multi client vending system which doesn't store your data on a 3rd party database, I have system that works well for me, I'd be happy to customise it to work well for you too [ for a small fee ] .