Clone me? What does this mean?

I received a strange IM today and I have no idea what it means. I have removed the names per the policy here. Can someone please tell me what this is? Is it some kind of scam?

[3:24] Name Removed: The owner of Name Removed wants me to clone you,
if you allow this please reply me with:
I Accept Clone or iac

if you disallow me to clone you, reply:
I Decline Clone or idc
NOTE: Cloning is only temporary it wont save your avatar and wont work
on prim attachments.

simple answer... NEVER grant permissions to someone you do not know.

I don't intend to grant any permissions; I am more interested in what this request is about. Can I assume if I simply ignore the IM, no permissions can be granted?

Does anyone know what I am being asked?

maybe he wants to try copy bot on you?

Ignore it, nothing can happen unless you give permission... Is it safe or a scam? I have no idea... would I trust it? hell no hehe

What does that mean? What does it do?

Definately sounds like something I wouldn't do.

Pretty mysterious. The message came in an IM, not a dialog box, so it's not "real" permissions like a script would request to animate one's avatar or--god forbid--debit L$s from your balance. And since it's an IM, if it's script-generated (happen to remember what color the text appeared in? and was it really in the IM window, or just in chat?...) if it's script generated, then the script must already have the agent's "key" in order to send the IM, so it wouldn't need a reply to get that information for whatever it wants to do. Seems that the "permission" being sought is formal (or "legal" in some sense?), not technical.

But that doesn't help us figure out what "cloning" would have done, nor why they'd need your "permission" to do it.

Sounds like a new copybot'ish thing that's trying to be nice.

A couple of the bots out there have an avatar cloning feature. My guess its a copybot derivative. I looked into the 'commercially available' bot that is in world while testing my camping builds. Never used it, never will. One of me is already too many.

Clone me, Doctor Memory!

How about getting in touch with "Name Removed" via IM and asking them what it's all about?

Maybe you could post the results here so that we can all learn...

Originally copybot was able to take any object in world and somehow copy the prims to look exactly the same as the original, minus the textures. Particularly disturbing if you make hair or anyother complicated prim accessories.

An avatar copybot, if he was serious, I'd assume it'd work in the same manner, giving you the avatar's shape? I don't know. That seems pointless to me, but I would be effin pissed if someone had my shape. I've been asked way too many times for it and I've spent a year tweaking it just right...no one's cloning me.

I think I'm a clone now
there's always two of me just hanging around
I think I'm a clone now
cause every set of genes is a hand me down...

It is an avatar copybot. A friend witnessed this working recently. The person asks somone near them if they can 'clone' them and if they say yes, they change into a complete duplicate of the person. I suspect they are doing this partly as a 'game', and they ask permission so you can't complain when they do it.

However, when someone allows this, or the person does it without permission, they get copies of all your textures. Skins, clothes, etc, even though the original creator did not give permission.

I wonder if they are doing it this way, so they can try to shift any blame for texture theft onto the person that 'gave permission' to be cloned.

Wow - they can seriously do this?

That would mean you could literally steal anything.

Copybot could copy all prims and textures, and also copy avatars. And it didn't need permission from the person it was copying.

Yes, and they can steal almost anything already. Textures are quite easy to steal. Prim dimensions would not be too hard for any object the client can see. I even think that there are ways to steal animations. Only no mod scripts are safe, and that's only until a random permission bug hits you and one of your items becomes full perms.

I think that the texture cloned for skin/clothes would be a composite baked texture, not all the individual textures. I'm not positive though.

Permission doesnt really matter

Heres why -

I can create an unverified Alt and buy whatever it is I want to copy

then just give permission with my alt.

Then sell all the stuff I copied to others as my own work on a second unverified alt.


My alts will belong to the supposed RL people Minnie and Mary Mouse - of Lake Buena Vista, Florida.

It's really not even that complicated. If your client can see, it can be stolen. It doesn't matter who the other avatar is.

if this is a derivitive of copybot...copybot needed no permission to copy prims. Will this always need permission to copy your avatar? I'm not scared if I have to OK it, but if someone walks up to me and suddenly turns into me after 30 seconds, I'm quite worried.

Well, I guess I dun need to dat topic I was gonna, about "one year since copybot: did it really kill SL like we all expected it to?"

Mari

I don't know if anyone is aware, but the 'permissions' as to whether you can actually 'see' something, or whether it is no copy, trans, mod etc, are all controlled via the client software. The LL servers poll your client and check if you are on the permissions allowance list (group shared/owned, creator etc), if the client's answer is no (via the UUID confirmation to your loggin account details), then you are denied. Thats why you have to change your group tag when you do certain things in SL, such as build on group owned land or run scripts etc. It is the same for textures held in your cache, the client is the one denying you the ability to copy it.

I am not sure what steps LL have taken to keep this secure on each persons system, now they have released the Open Source code.. but judging by the devistation that copybot has caused, not enough I would speculate.

Avatar bot must be based on a similar system, as everything about you in SL, that others can see, must also reside in their cache. Spooky that cloning would be so easy... Terminator 2 .

You win this thread for quoting Weird Al.