SLStats.com Redux

If you've been paying attention to the SL Answers spam (yay satire) you probably see that people are making a fuss about Mark's website.. The service itself isn't exactly new, but now that it's been brought to the attention of the dribbling forum masses, woo! Fireball!

People are voicing their opinions about wanting to 'opt-out' of this service. They want to opt out of the information displayed there, which is freely available to any SL resident (that means anyone in the world, including small puppies, if you're talking about the MG).

Hello? You're this [-------] close from just saying that you'd like to opt out of the Finder itself. At that point, doesn't it start to become blatantly ridiculous?

Discuss.

I don't see what the fuss is, if you don't wear the watch, you don't get alot of info collected from you.
Sure, you can do inferencing based on watch-wearers who are around you, but that's not any big deal to me.
If you don't want to be associated with some one, don't be arround them.

I was going to do a big bullet-pointed writeup on how silly these complaints are but i'm just too fucking lazy today. Here - It isn't against CS in any way, vending machines have been doing this for a long time, it's not "your" information - it's public within SL, and you are NOT your av.

cool, just freed up like 20 minutes for minesweeper.

The watch tracks everyone you encounter and lists it on the site. That per se is not a problem, but all that info was available without a login. All the pages are public.

Yes I mind ... but it's not about Mark's product per se.

The reason I mind is not as simple as it appears. SL is moving towards becoming the intenet in 3D, with parcels being webspaces and shops being e-commerce sites.

As such, the privacy issue needs to be addressed early while it's still manageable.

well i don't care if people know where i go.. heck i'll tell em myself..

There are many people in the world who don't feel a day is complete unless they feel they've complained sufficiently enough.

It's not a complaint, just an obversation.

Actually, no, it isn't riduculous. Many games let you go anonymous...all they can see is your name...no level, no ratings, nothing...name only. Be nice if SL put that into the finder.

'Brought to the attention of the dribbling forum masses' Nice elitism there. Even ifI *HAD* agreed with your point, I'd have opposed you just on the basis of that assholish comment!

The guy from slstats may be one heck of a nice guy, but he falls into the typical techie mindset of 'this is neat, it can be done, I will do it' without thinking through the ramifications. OF COURSE there would be angry people....that's a given for anyone with a modicum of knowledge of human nature and past forum flareups over privacy....he should have never rolled it out without an opt-out feature. Had he put a bit of thought into the human aspects of it instead of just the 'gee whiz, lookatthat!' techie side, there would have been no firestorm (what little there is, the anti posters have, for the most part, been politer than his supporters in the forums, using you as a primary example).

The main objection I and many have is that it tracks non-watch-wearing (I think he uses a watch object, right?) people in more than anonymous ways. Want to count me in a club or room population anonymously...great...having every watchwearer that came within sight of a player listed as 'contacts'...not so cool. The watches should ONLY record ingame identifiable info for OTHER watch wearers...an opt-in approach, taking anonymous count statistics on the rest. Would this make the voyeurs and stalkers that LIKE full display happy, no, but it would be a much more acceptable implementation.

I am a firm believer ingame info should stay ingame, UNLESS THE PLAYER GIVES PERMISSION for it to be taken out of game. SLExchange works that way...hell, even Ulrika's database of Keys allows you to opt out of it (she zero's the keys). The guy from slstats.com didn't think his implementation through from an end-user/nontech viewpoint and is responsible for any criticism that has resulted.

Good luck with that. There is ZERO privacy in SL.

-Ghoti

That's right now. It will have to be addressed down the line, and likely will be.

The debate over slstats sounds very much like the debate over external Name2Key databases a while back. The "Opt in/out" catchphrase was tossed around in that thread, and in no time folks were coming out of the woodwork demanding to be excluded.

Personally, I don't see what the fuss is about either. And this isn't the first 'fansite' that has taken in-world statistical data, and presented it out world.

I'll be positively shocked if Linden comes back with a statement saying that this sort of data collection violates the TOS.

What about:
Cadroe Murphy's site?
Eggy's SL Wiki?
W-Hat, Moopf, or Ulrika's Name2Key Database?
Max Case's Sim Neighbors?

There are many more.

Where exactly does one draw the line?

The way I read the TOS, that line is drawn at disclosing RL information about an avatar without permission. I don't believe that's being done here.

If I do have a problem with anything, its the Sim resources being used up by lots of people wearing agressive sensors as attachments. But that's a completely different debate.

My initial yet short-lived reaction - OMG! Haxorz! Oh Noes!!!!!!!!

Well, not really. I went to see what all the fuss was about. Unfortunately, there isn't actually anything very juicy to look up on me. A few of the watch users have seen me. Most of them I know where that would have been. But I can't find how anybody else would know where these people saw me.

The rest of the information about me is public profile information.

The site describes itself as ""Second Life's premier useless statistics site!"

That's about right.

If someone wants to wear an SL equivalent of a radio tracker collar and have their every move recorded and made a matter of public record, that is their choice. You wouldn't get me to wear one no matter how much you paid me for it, but that part is up to the individual who chooses to wear it.

However, turning every person who wears one of these devices into a walking scanner that collects information on the people in the vacinity without any permission and then displays that information on a public website... no, that is crossing the line.

I have seen major SL financial kiosks kicked out of a sim because they were publicly posting scanner data that merely consisted of clusters of green dots, indicating where people were walking within 96 meters of the kiosk. No individual identities, but the data could highlight area use patterns. This is far more of an invasion of privacy.

This product identifies individuals who 'encounter' someone, defined as 'being within 20 meters of them at some point'.

Consider this scenario: An SL Hooker... pardon me... an Escort, wearing one of these tracker watches will be making a list of all her 'clients' a matter of public record, and would also be implicating ANYONE WHO WALKS NEARBY as also having partonized her services. If she walks into a busy club, or into a clothing store, every person in the club or store shows up on that site as as 'encountering' her. If you are not a customer of such services, do YOU want to be lumped in with all the people who are? I do not.

If the person offering this service were to eliminate the involuntary collection of data about every person that is unfortunate enough to walk near one of his customers, then I have no problem with that service. But saying he will eventually offer an 'opt out' option to those who do not want to be tracked, when the vast majority of those people have NO IDEA THEY ARE BEING TRACKED, is completely inadequate.

What you don't seem to be aware of is tht this is an issue that was battled over many months ago here - and privacy lost. It's not a new issue to settle 'while its early', I'm afraid.


If i kept a notebook next to my desk and wrote down what every avatars name I saw was, what they were wearin at the time, and what their shoes were like, and then published this onto a list on my website, I would have broken no rules whatsoever. SLstats does the equivilent of that by collecting _public_ (within SL) data (as opposed to, say, a hack that somehow counted how many $L you have), and publishes it to their private website.

Privacy lost round #1...no reason to roll over and play dead. Eventually the lindens will have to do something if any of this 'platform' 'future internet' is more than just BS they roll out for the VC's and starry-eyed players. All it takes is a LL ruling and its changed.

I'm sure the issue of privacy has been there since almost the beginning.

But based on where SL is as a platform, even right now is still actually on the early side. LL is still working on functionality and seems only now to be beginning work on the more serious issues like anti-grief, security, and scalability.

With the large mass of unverified (the good, the bad, and the ugly) we are going to see all the other issues that need addressing, and because of the added data we will also have a better picture of how to deal with them. Privacy is one such issue. What I see happening is LL allowing trouble to happen so that the best solutions can be spotted. It's a sort of shotgun kind of approach. It's going to be painful for everyone but the solutions will be better-designed.

SL is a laboratory. To tell you the truth I never saw it as a game or just a virtual world. It's a lab where experiments happen and data are collected.

So I was at the park a few days ago, and I took a PICTURE, and it had PEOPLE in it. I totally violated their privacy. It was pretty sweet.

Are you aware that every website you visit on the intarweb collects a nice glob of information about you?

Ditto for you.

I'm having a hard time reconciling the 'platform' 'future internet' argument with the 'data must stay in world' argument. I mean this seriously and am not trying to grief you - I just don't see you can have it both ways?

This is what I'm trying to say, thanks for putting it better than I am.

Yep.

But just because it's happening now it doesn't mean it has to be that way for SL or the future.

The one issue I see here is more of a technical issue with SL, as usual. That is that you can sensor people from outside their property and outside camera range. So for someone to have a private "event" which people could attend without their presence being broadcast on the web, they would have to create at least a 96m buffer zone and teleport people in directly. Basically LL has provided a tool that sees through walls at long range. LL could allow people to turn off sensing on or into their parcels. But since they don't allow people to prevent cameras from looking into their parcels either, I wouldn't hold my breath. Once again the current solution seems to be to pay Linden Lab $US1250 for a private island.

MMMMMMmmmmm... I love the smell of paranoia in the afternoon.

Remember Jillian Callahan's proposal of the pocketspace, where the buildings are there but you're not visible, even if you're right there? If LL implemented that (and it's not too difficult to do) not only can scans be stopped or limited, but you will get real privacy because no one outside your parcel can see you. The building is there, but you don't appear, not with decoupled cameras, not in wireframe mode, and if they wanted to, not even on the mini map.

It's only a series of data filters.

Private islands are the current solution, but down the line, it's not the only one.

You gripers are all being freaking ridiculous. What you're demanding is tantamount to demanding that the government outlaw EYES. Seriously, get a grip.