How do you avoid the Avatar Online trackers??

The fact that they have no clue doesn't mean they won't inappropriately use information about an IP address if someone tells them about the idea. In fact the fact that they have no clue makes it more likely.

THAT is based on 20 years of experience as a system and network administrator. There's nothing more dangerous than a user who thinks he has a clue.

Does not stop them being alt-stalked from a local internet cafe or friends house on a different IP though does it? They can ban all the same IPs they want but it won't prevent it, so my reply to Pie was spot on that trying to stamp out alt-stalking with IP addresses is a waste of time.

I agree about the clueless user though and yes I agree that DJ's are mostly clueless enough to ban same IP address and not caring if they are driving people away who have done them no harm. I have never said different or disagreed with that.

I don't think it really matters whether they are going to be successful or not. They're not the people I'm concerned about.

Well Pie and I were when I replied Lol, just who are you concerned about anyway?

I'm concerned about the people who are trying to avoid negative attention from someone by logging in as an alt, and then turn around and let the people who they are trying to avoid said attention know who they are by leaving streaming media turned on when visiting land where the media stream can be set by the person they're trying to avoid or someone in collaboration with them.

Edit: if this includes people trying to alt-stalk a DJ, well, whatever. They need to keep that trick in mind as well. I wasn't taking the term "stalking" that seriously, and anyone can "be a DJ".

Isn't it more likely that these people will just avoid places where this person is likely to be? Not sure there is really an issue here, it seems very edge case to me.

Reading this stories of intrusive friends rings very true for me. We often talk of ettiquette on this forum like no begging, etc. But what about: NOT IMING someone EVERY TIME they log on. Alot of people in SL seem to place social obligations on their friends. Whether its going to a wedding, being dragged to a club, forced to some event or just hanging out/rping incessantly.

People should be remembering that SL is played in one's REAL LIFE LEISURE TIME. Being that its leisure time, people do NOT want to spend it fullfilling even more obligations. Nothing irritates me more than having to explain what I'm doing to someone in my leisure time because they expect me to socialize with them. I am a builder, I wish/need to spend 90% of my log in time building or sorting my inventory. This is my meditation, I ENJOY it, so I do not want my clingly friends telling me how I should be RPing/Socializing when I am already happy wuth my chosen activity. It gets tiring to be "mean" and have to always turn people down. If they simply understood that they need to primarily entertain themselves and not rely on others, there would be lot less social faux pauxs like this. Clingy people in SL are JUST as annoying as clingy people in RL.

A simple solution is to mark yourself as busy then IMs dont get through. As for making it so "friends" cant see you if they are in a group you belong to they can see. Good friends respect your privacy if they do it once just say hi sorry i am busy at the moment ill catch you later, they get the point

Again basic courtesy would take care of a lot of this.

IMing someone the instant they log or just saying "TP me" without asking if they are busy, isn't great 'netiquette.

Even, I think, if that person is one's best 'net bud or even significant other. But that varies by personal agreement of course.

In general, not a great idea. ITA about not wanting even more obligations when in SL which should be playtime.

That said, I do IM people on my friends list every once in a great while, because if I haven't spoken with someone in months it might be time to cull the list a bit. If they are busy I'm out with a 'sure okay enjoy'.

I added the fact that for a SERVICE PROVIDER to do the NAT, it takes more processing and configuration on the aggregation routers. Your dismissal of that fact is non-sequitur; evidently I didn't make my point clear enough. I'll try to use smaller words next time.

Perhaps you should use less words which have no bearing considering ISPs *are doing* this for some places in the world.

Also perhaps you should stop with the nastiness if you want to debate something. Speaking of debate what you just quoted me as saying to you was to show you that just because you come here and say that Argent is right because you are such and such in RL has absolutely no weight with me in the same way Argent saying he had been a Network Engineer for 20 years has absolutely no weight with me. Neither of you can prove your experience, even if you could you do not know that I don't have equivalent or better experience than you.
You *lose* an argument when you say "I am a qualified such and such so you must beleive me" and it makes people think you have no proof to backup what you are saying, otherwise you would present that instead.

All is opinions on the internet unless you back it up with proof in the form of links to credible articles and sources and when all is opinions until then then all opinions are equal at least until any can be disproven.

Why, I could say I am CTO Of Cisco in order to lend weight to my words, you would have no idea whether I was or not and I cannot prove it to you just as you cannot prove that you are someone who has the experience you say you have, nor can Argent.

So why not leave out the "I am this in RL so you have to beleive me when I say this" ? It has no relevance here.

Also quit with the condescension and trying to make it seem like I cannot understand you because of a fallacy in me when in fact it might be your failure to communicate clearly that is the issue.

Follow these simple things and perhaps debating with me might go smoother. After all it was *both* you and Argent that misunderstood my original position and posting and not the other way around.

These two things drive me crazy. Ugh! Give me a chance to rez, read through notices/notecards, and change clothes! And "TP Me" (or it's corollary, an unsolicited TP), is doubly annoying! What makes people think that I'm some place they would want to be TP'd to anyway?

What, and let some twerp drive them away from their real friends?

The "busy" function in SL is worthless and dangerous. It blocks product delivery, to begin with, and has so many other flaws that I'm amazed anyone bothers with it.

The request for a real "offline" mode, so you can be in-world without being logged in to the IM system, has been made many times and ignored by LL.

OK you have a good point there Argent I will concede it and I don't know what is a better solution to the problem either. IP based banning just leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth is all.

Hardly. Well... unless you want to walk around in crap clothes, crap skin, and with no AO and no gadgets or toys.

Only if you don't know how to find the Gnubie Store in Powder Mill.

IP based *anything* is the problem. The solution is to know how to keep your IP from being known, if it matters to you.

IP-based "banning" is not a good long-term solution, but if there is massive abuse coming from a small handful of IPs, it can (and is) used as a short-term "stopgap" measure to curb the abuse. It is good to remove IPs from such blocks in a few days' to a week's timeframe, especially in the case of IP range banning.

As far as for tracking information purposes, most users can be mapped with their alts via IP with a fairly low chance for "false positives". The number of different users (not accounts) who share an IP address is a fairly low percentage; low enough to make the practice useful for identifying "potential" alts. No, it isn't "foolproof", but it is still a fairly useful indicator of such, especially combined with other information.

You can setup an account with all freebies/dollarbies and have them looking pretty darn good - I did it and so have plenty of folks.

true..it's not like there is only the malabu to choose from anymore..
the freebies now are soooo much better than back when i was getting them..
there is so much more content now and creators and a lot of them do contribute some very nice things to the community..
i'm not taking anything away from the creators back then because times and styles change and i felt the same back then..
some of those things were very nice..

Heh... All this crowd is pretty lucky... Most of the time, I'm waiting for IMs to come in. I do as much as possible to reveal to my friends that I'm online and available to do something. Most of the time, my IM box is crickets unless I did something bad the day before. (>_<

Price I pay for being pretty boring, I guess... So, I spend most of my time trolling welcome areas, group chats, and mentoring and teaching in NCI. (^_^)

I have a couple people I consider my best friends, but, time zones and responsibilities on their part make it hard for us to ever meet up. For the rest, I don't seem to last on their list. Everyone else seems to have something better to do, so, back to the crowds I go. (=_=)

The arrangements I see in SL are biased to encourage contact and availability to friends. For me, I want to see more of it. I offer all of it. I'm shut in and isolated enough in RL... I don't wanna bring that baggage in SL. I want to meet, greet, play, and enjoy my time with people here. I'm trying to live out the social life I never had. Start shutting down these tools, and, it will diminish the reasons I joined the grid in the first place. (T_T)

See, you need to go sideways more often.

Have you ever noticed that Ceka and Trisha are never at the same party. *grins*

You're my kind of person I absolutely LOVE keeping my inventory organized and spend most of my time online now building, taking classes to learn how to build better, customer service for my store, etc.

And I never thought of it like that...but sorting inventory really is meditation for me. I usually turn on a classical music channel and can spend hours doing that.