Alts and Basic accounts

Could the hardware hash be used to keep people from making a zillion accounts on one machine?

Thus if a troublemaker tries to keep making new accounts in order to get on land they have been banned from the new account procedure would check to see how many accounts have been created from that machine. There is supposed to be a limit of 5 accounts per household so it wouldn't be unreasonable to put on hold on new accounts on a machine that has had five accounts formed on it. Something like that.

Why don't we suggest making the billing database available to everyone, along with IP, MAC, and Hardware ID?

LL does not give a damn about selling premium accounts. It's LAND. The secret is LAND. LL want to sell ISLANDS and get those nice large payments instead of dealing numerous small time payments from the likes of us.

Say it with me. "Listen up, forum whiners. You are not special. You are not a beautiful UUID. You're the same pathetic enduser as everyone else. You're not your prefab. You're not how much money you have in Ginko. You're not the AO you wear. You're not the missing contents of your inventory. You're not your f'ing L$2000 fetish skin. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world."

Buy an island and THEN LL will care. LAND LAND LAND LAND LAND. Your 9.95/month buys the same level of apathy your Supersized Combo does at McDonalds.

No one has ever suggested making this hash key publically available. Nor would it need be. In fact LL has said it will only be available to LL employees. Come back to reality.

It's not all it's cracked up to be.

In the world where you can have a separate basic account in under a minute as long as you have email account to go with it, how would you even determine who is alt of whom?

Not everyone creates an Alt just so they can grief. In fact, I'd venture to say that only a few alts are actually created by people with premium accounts for griefing purposes.

One of the griefers that I've recently run into I know was banned sometime back and then returned to the game because they did not have to identify themselves. Fun stuff.

I suspect there are more just like him or possibly her (who knows).

I think that outing one's Alt should be one's own decision. Otherwise you (and your Alt) should be entitled to complete privacy.

Just my 2 lindens.

I have two lovely alts. They are there to hold my groups together in times of need. They help my friends hold their groups when my own allocation is full. My closest friends know who they are, they are easily tracked back to me through my groups.

So far, I've had no reason to hide from my adoring fans (much personal laughter at the tought of having any), but I've known folks who need the peace fropm time to time and I see no reason to rob them of it, nor deny myself that sanctuary should I ever get so busy that I need an in game break.

Alts are not inherently evil. They can be misused but so can the knife in your kitchen and you don't have to register that with anyone. The Lindens know who we are, one way or another, and that's all that matters.

I would think we've gone far enough down the road of plastering scarlet letters on folks witih the verified/paid verified/unverified labelling without having to further tighten the noose, further give up our much coveted privacy in the name of some good cause. The road to Hell is paved with such good intentions.

I'm not trying to belittle the griefer issue. I understand a lot of folks out there run into problems a lot more often than I do, or at least from the sound of it here, they do. However, curtailing the liberties of the majority to try to somehow thwart the minority, is a bit dangerous a road to travel in my book. Where do you draw the line once you start?

Char

NO, absolutely NOT.

Yes I would have done that if this was a proposal, but it is a discussion, I wanted to get views and interests of other residents before I go and try and pursue something with LL and I am glad I did because there are some very good points in this thread, thanks for the advice though

Well now that LL collects hardware info upon login it should not be too hard

Yes privacy seems to be the biggest problem.... so any suggestions on how to assure residents that someone they banned from thier land or muted isn't going to just come back and ruin or intrude in thier Second Life on an alt?

That merely tells you hardware configuration of certain computer used to connect to SL happens to produce the same hash a computer used by another account does. Using this logic accounts of everyone who happens to use the same more or less publicly available computer to log into SL... are all alts of single person. Which quite clearly can be very far from truth.

Nearly all proposals I've seen regarding alt controls are founding their solutions on the premise that:



The premise above is no different in nature from the ridiculous point of view that some take that: IMMIGRANTS = TROUBLEMAKERS.

First, when proposing solutions one must first look at all possibilities and necessarily must design to get the advantages one seeks while taking into account all those other possibilities. Solutions should take into account Griefer alts and Thief alts but must also cover Privacy alts, Roleplaying alts, and Test subject alts. Take into account those who are law abiding but simply do not want their other identities revealed.

Second, one must also think of the technology involved. All the machine hash will say is that a particular character is being played on a particular machine. When two accounts are played on the same machine one must take into consideration other possibilities:

1. The two accounts are of the same person (alt)
2. The accounts belong to two different household members (not alt)
3. The accounts belong to two people who don't live in the same house (visiting player)
4. The machine is now permanently in use by another person. (not alt)

Third is the issue of implementation. Looking at the 4 conditions above, how will one positively identify condition #1? I do not see any method to do so.

So for all of you there who want solutions to problems, please look at all exisiting conditions and possibilities before you propose your solutions. While it's true that you usually can't spot all possibilities, at least TRY to.

This idea is a violation of privacy, plain and simple.
In addition,the clever folk could easilly get around this. I doubt people regestering alts for harassment use, use the same contact information, and the hardware hashes are circumventable if you have an operational knowledge of what they are, and how to deal with them.

According to what Pathfinder Linden said, about a year ago or so, you're right, it is a privacy violation.

Not to mention, there are plenty of idiots with no alts.

You are correct on both counts. This has been said multiple times by multiple lindens (it seems to come up alot in SL Answers), and there are plenty of altless dorks.

If you meen recorded by the lindens, i don't see how that would work since the only way to link them would be by email. You can use any email (even fake ones) to create a account. My accounts all use different email addresses, so i don't see how anyone can link them.

If you meen we write our alts in our profile ourselves, well i just don't wish to do that. I have some accounts i use for privacy. To make that visable to the public would remove that privacy. We already have a major lack of privacy as it is. :/

Couldn't have said it better.

My alt was created as a fashion plate. She models the clothes I don't have time to go around trying on.

Then you will have entire families listed on profiles because they all use the same cc. It would be assumed they are alts, when in fact they are not

Is this what people are referring to when they mention a Pathfinder Linden statement about alts?




This quote pertained to users making claims in the forums about one avatar being an alt of another avatar.

This was contradicted and thus overturned by Robin Linden, when asked about whether we are allowed to make claims like, for example, that Nolan Nash is the alt of Prokofy Neva and Taco Rubio.



These quotes both pertain to what users can do in the forums, and have no to what the Linden Lab can do in the Second Life client.

What would be interesting would be if LL decided to extend the same hardware identification to banning at the sim level. That way, when you ban someone, all of their Alts would be banned as well but their privacy would be protected since you would not need to know who their alts are. You are just banning an entity associated with a hardware address, but by banning that one entity you ban all entities associated with that hardware address.

Just a thought, not sure if it's possible.

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I am pretty sure Linden Lab will NOT do this in the client. They don't disclose residents names in ARs and the blotter, in addition you can have different unique accounts comming from the same hardware addresses, along with nonunique alts comming from different contact information and hardware addresses. The Lindens seem to take privacy pretty seriously which is good.

I'd call it inconsistency, versus an overturning. If she had quoted Path, I'd call it overturned. Had it continued, Path apparently would have issued formal warnings. I doubt that Robin would have overturned those hypothetical warnings. In fact, she once told me that they do not like to overrule one another, and that they don't.

I suppose someone needs to ask for a clarifiication now.

And yes, I realize those quotes pertain to the forums. However, I used that example to illustrate the spirit in which LL deals with the topic. Though now that's muddled, thanks to your prowess at forum searching and Linden quoting.