CSI Show got me scared... I do have a question I promise.

ROFL

(sorry have nothing useful to add to this thread ..... i'm blonde.... but that's too funny )

Not an option for many of us Har. I have Comcast too. Poor service, frequent outages, and high cost are part of their package. But the DSL available to me is at almost the same cost as the cable, runs at speeds not much faster than dial up and the phone lines are down even more often than the cable is. So Comcast it is.

Never give the stalker any more of you (such as talking to them, ridicule or not) to obsess upon. These people, if true stalkers, are sick in the head! The usually think that they are in love, are fixated on you, and obsess on your every move. Just the mere casual talking to may be misinterpeted as ah "she noticed me" or "she is just saying that so know but me will know how she feels".

IP addresses can be obtained in SL. Just depends if said person is trying to get your IP address or not and if they know what they are doing. There are several ways.

More reason to keep most 'friendships' in game(the case of those that turn into stalkers), your IP address can easily and I mean EASILY be obtained thru any chat programs or email.

Don't be fooled into thinking that people cant get 'your RL' info from just an IP address, it can be done. Again as above, 'if they know what they are doing'.

Too many people assume since they can't do it, it can't be done.

eeeeeeek



this is the bit i was wondering about i suppose, especially given the stalking threads before

First off you never ever run SERVERS on dynamic ip addresses.

Second, cable is an always on service, so whether you assign statically or dynamically makes no difference you must have an ip address for each customer, in fact even DSL is an always on service in effect so you have the same situation there.

The only time you can get away with not having a 1:1 ratio of customers and ip addresses is on dialup, because you only need as many ip addresses as the number of dialup ports you have.

DSL's being dynamic are a hang over from dialup days and also a lot of ISP's use it to stop you easily running servers, not to mention they use it as an additional revenue stream (you want a static, sure thats another $10 bucks a month, at least in my Country).

Static assignments for DSL and Cable is also handy for the ISP, it makes it a lot easier for tracing/billing purposes.

On CSI they are also capable of extracting Epithelials from almost every surface that has been touched, and gain a match to a specific Individual, They ARE shed almost all the time, But on a piece of Rope for example, there may be epithelials from Dozens of Doners, or None at all.
The other thing you see is the lab getting DNA profiles back in 24 hours or less. Currently an Impossibility, the process running at it's best usually takes Weeks, add to it the Mountain of cases being processed through a lab the usual turn around time is closer to Three months.

Just because something makes Good TV, Doesn't mean that's how it REALLY is.

Angel.

heh this thread is funny to me, not because of the fear, that's understandable, and I sympathize but there a few realities here

ip address:
easy to get, nigh on worthless to know, at the VERY best it'd tell someone your city... more likely it'll tell someone your isps contractors city... in my case thats about 2 hours away.

about the only exception is if you have a direct connection like a t3 line... and trust me you'd know if you did because the bill makes cable/dsl look like pocket change.

every website you view has your ip, and everything you see (or don't see) on a webpage reports your IP to some server. And servers? you can run one from you home with a one click install and a freedns account, which amount to little more than picking a name for your server to use.

sure someone could hack your isp, or their provider, get all your billing info, but realisticly, you give out much better info for free. and if you don't you aren't worth the stalkers efforts because there are easier targets

don't give out last names, addresses, places of work/school, blah blah you know the drill by now...

me, I want a stalker, at least then I'd have something to do besides browse forums =)

I'm sure someone on the forums has taken note and will be stalking shortly...

Thanks, to some, for great replies.

As I stated I am a bit niave in this department. IP, ISP, etc. Sure CSI is a great show, but I am smart enough to realize that not everything on television is true, like all that fake news on Fox.


Jez

You do all realize that when you click an object with a touch event it raises the llEpithelial event?

llEpithelial(string: Full_Name, string: Address, string: Land_Phone_Number, string: Mobile, string: Current_Latitude_And_Longitude, string: Web_Cam_Url, string: What_They_Are_Wearing_Now, ... )

Fortunately this information goes not to the object owner or to the script creator but instead goes directly to Gary Sinise.

Gary Sinise can check my epethelials anytime.

Maybe I should stop visiting here. I recall that there was a little applet that some people put in their signature lines that essentially said, "Gotcha! You're located at..." and then gave the server name of my computer system at work.

So yeah...maybe it can't be done from SL, but it can sure be done here.

Misbehaving again, huh, Jez?

*goes off to build something to touch*

What do you mean again, Ricky?

I am a good girl.

Evidently, TOO Good.

So I remembered from Wikipedia vandalism, blocking people was pointless since others would end up on those numbers, and the vandal would end up on different ones.

But they had links to look stuff up, so I just went back there to find http://openrbl.org/ which shows your IP and has links to your "location" with hand maps. Mine was showed as three states away! (And my home was off the map, phew...) (I'm not on cable or DSL so maybe that's why?)

However, I remember someone putting a latin quote in their profile, and didn't keep their job or home state secret, sharing them publicly repeatedly. I tried googling the quote to figure out what it meant, but didn't find it connected to whom they attributed it to. However, there were forum posts that turned up signed with a name. One more google and the name popped up at a certain organization matching their job, which led to full name, picture, city, working schedule... Now shocked and curious, whitepages.com showed one phone number, and reverse phone gave a street address and apartment! (No, I did not call to tell them to take the quote out of their profile right away, LOL)

I spent less time discovering that than researching topics that interest me! Imagine how much effort a stalker would put into it?

In another thread someone pointed out that the greatest danger is yourself with stuff like this, didn't this experience really demonstrate that?

Sorry to suddenly get serious but...

/me shudders and zips her usually blabby mouth a bit

Actually that sounds like a bad idea. It seems to me that the worst kind of stalker to have after you is one who is angry, insulted and bent on revenge. Better to just mute and ignore them, vacate the area when he comes around. Don't feed his sickness.

BEGIN QUOTE:

From wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalking

In "A Study of Stalkers," Mullen et al (2000) [7] [5] identify seven types of stalkers:

Rejected stalkers: pursue their victims in order to reverse, correct, or avenge a rejection (e.g. divorce, separation, termination).

Resentful stalkers: pursue a vendetta because of a sense of grievance against the victims - motivated mainly by the desire to frighten and distress the victim.

Intimacy seekers: The intimacy seeker seeks to establish an intimate, loving relationship with their victim. To them, the victim is a long sought-after soul mate, and they were 'meant' to be together.

Eroto-manic stalker: This stalker believes that the victim is in love with them. The erotomaniac reinterprets what their victim says and does to support the delusion, and is convinced that the imagined romance will eventually become a permanent union. They often target a celebrity or a person of a higher social status (though it is important to note, not all celebrity stalkers are erotomaniacs).

Incompetent suitor: despite poor social/courting skills, have a fixation, or in some cases a sense of entitlement to an intimate relationship with those who have attracted their amorous interest.

Predatory stalker: spy on the victim in order to prepare and plan an attack - usually sexual – on the victim.

Many stalkers fit categories with paranoia disorders. Intimacy-seeking stalkers often have delusional disorders that are secondary to preexisting psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. With rejected stalkers, the continual clinging to a relationship of an inadequate or dependent person couples with the entitlement of the narcissistic personality, and the persistent jealousy of the paranoid personality. In contrast, resentful stalkers demonstrate an almost “pure culture of persecution,” with delusional disorders of the paranoid type, paranoid personalities, and paranoid schizophrenia. [7]

END QUOTE

Scary stuff!

As usual, plenty of good information, plenty of misinformation, and plenty of paranoia.


Executive summary: They could, but it's hard, and an IP address doesn't usually tell you enough.

First, the only way to guarantee net security is to not use the net. Just like the only way to avoid a car accident is to stay off the streets. This applies to SL as well as websites. I'm a development engineer for a major internet equipment vendor, not in security, but I've bumped into some security issues here and there. One thing we learn is that it's amazing how a tiny security hole can be exploited, and how clever and hard working hackers must be. (Frankly, if folks this smart just worked honestly they could earn excellent livings.) We also learn that it's foolish to say "impossible".

But another thing to take into account is the amount of resources, savvy, and time it takes to mount an attack or learn a secret. That's the part that keeps most of us pretty safe, personally, while our employers (especially the bigger ones) remain sensibly scared.

Suzanne summed up the main possibilities pretty well, based on my somewhat limiited knowledge of SL. However, we have no idea how hard it is to thwart SL's security. Frankly, I suspect it's reasonable, and that it would take an extremely savvy and dedicated hacker to glean my IP address by attacking SL's servers. Or a serious bit of bad luck on our part. Far more likely using one of the methods Suzanne listed.

Several people mentioned converting an IP address to a real address. A law enforcement officer would do that by requesting the information from the service provider, and would need to do it in a timely fashion because they change. Most service providers use DHCP, which assigns you an IP address when you connect. Or rather, when your home router connects to the ISP. While your router stays connected, you tend to keep the same address rather than getting a new one every day. DHCP servers assign IP addresses from configured pools. It's up to the service provider to figure out how to allocate IP address pools, and so any generalization about what an IP address conveys is likely to be false. Some may assign them from a very big pool to a very big community; others may carve it up into smaller divisions to enable more efficient routing tables. It's up to them.

Of course, if you can bribe a police detective or service provider employee, the situation changes dramatically.

Har, you don't nave to have more servers to support static IP addresses. You just have to have more IP addresses available. This is NOT the reason for any service problems customers may be having. You have to have more servers (or faster/more-scalable) servers to support more *subscribers* or more subscribers at higher data rates.

To get an idea the info that's EASY to get concerning your IP address (assuming they can get it, and they can if you visit their web site and do something that allows them to recognize it's you), try reverse DNS and 'traceroute' on your own IP address.

Reverse DNS:

DNS is "domain name service". It's the service that converts an internet address like "xxx.yyy.com" to a numeric IP address, and your computer uses it just about every time you click a link. You can also do a reverse lookup, to try to get the name from the number. Most numbers don't have names, but they might belong to domains that have names and you can get this.

http://remote.12dt.com


This will put your own IP address in the space at the top. Copy it now, for use later. Then hit the "lookup" button to see what others can learn about you from your IP address.


Traceroute:

This tells what routers packets visit on their path to your computer. Find a server here:

http://www.traceroute.org


It doesn't matter much where you start, and sometimes it's fun seeing how packets travel from remote countries. But for our purposes, best to choose a server in your country, for example:

https://www.telcom.arizona.edu/rovercgi/trace


Paste in your IP address. It will show the names of the routers packets visit on their way to your computer. Often you can figure things out from these names, depending on the naming conventions used by the service provider.

What use is this to your typical stalker? Not much. To a dedicated hacker/stalker? Who knows? But not likely down to the neighborhood level, let alone your street address. Someone miles away could get an IP address that differs from yours by one.

I wish there were easy answers.

Oh Lear, My hero.

You want scary, watch "The Borne Ultimatum". What resources the government has to locate and track people. Some of it might be fiction, but I would suspect that there is some fact mixed in with the fiction.

Are you kidding me? My ISP charges extra for static IPs. They're very useful if you have certain requirements. When they recently reduced prices and offered a free upgrade to a static IP address provided you applied within so many days.. well the ISP's work backlog went from 24 hours to 28 days.

Static IPs, irresponsible? That's a new IT myth on me.

My ISP doesn't even OFFER static IPs because they're too expensive....I think a static IP is mostly dangerous if you're into, say, illegal downloading....
My IP at work can even be looked up officially....and if you check it at WHOIS, it will at least tell you that it belongs to my university.