Collecting information about your computer?

So why do we keep getting told that the 'community' are leading the direction that SL goes by creating the content and pushing the limits of what is possible - and LL are pulling in the opposite direction?

Lewis

I don't think LL is stopping at this. Robin never claimed it was a complete solution. You really need several components to end griefing and LL of all people know that changing the registration specs is not the complete solution. As it stands the alterations will address part of the issue of alts-griefing and pedophile attacks on the teen grid.

They are also working on several other griefing tools one of which was already mentioned: the option to disable PUSH coming from outside your parcel (this is a MAJOR anti-grief tool).

I still don't know what they have to protect all (landed and landless) who are in areas not protected by the PUSH disable (e.g. sandboxes). The named tool only defends the landholding not the landowner himself.

I would still love to see a checkbox option to disable or request confirmation for alien PUSHes (those that come from devices other than your own). That way we can still have PUSH elevators and other such useful devices without all these bouncer scripts. The checkbox setting can of course be ignored in full PVP areas.

I agree completely on the issue of hardware profiles. This is the best answer to griefers yet...far better than a simple CC number. This bans the accessing system completely rather than simply banning an account which may not even have the griefer's own info.

I do have concerns about the changes to account status visability however. I agree with many others that segregating the citizens of SL based on such information is likely to result in a class system and a far less cohesive and friendly SL community. There are many varied and legitimate reasons why someone might fall into any of these three categories, and banning people from land or business transactions based on this alone rather than their actions is indeed going to be bad for SL overall, in my opinion.

maybe someone can tell me or refer me to the right answer.. but it would seem that LL is collecting data about the hardware.. that I understand.. based on that information then they are able to deal with griefers and those with multiple alts created only for griefing. So if your kid is out griefing and running amok or anyone else whom shares your pc, then your whole pc gets blocked from playing anymore? This doesnt really bother me since its just me on here, but is that possible?

From reading the posts about age verifcation and such, I thought the matter was more related in not exposing kids and teens that get into the main grid to mature content and diminishing the amount of griefers. I havent met any kids and the only griefer Ive dealt with was a paid account that was the worst most vicious neighbor ever and multiple incidents, reports, and live help did nothing.. so I sold he my land for 3 times as much and rebuilt lol. One time I got shot while building on my land, and I bought a system that does reverse punishment throwing the shooter off the sim and not me.

If its kids we worry about.. maybe make an option so people can looked through walls and spy. I like that idea even if its not kids haha. If its greifers and such, then have a way to accept it similar to so and so wants to animate your avatar is this ok?

I understand what your saying, but it comes down to this:

People are NOT mature in their dealings with each other. It's a fact of life.

What we are seeing is the begining of something akin to certification. While no one likes it (ho BOY, am I getting heat for my opinions on this <grins>, the point is we have to be able to prove certain things about people whne they deal in certain things.

We have to keep kids out of adult areas. For their OWN saftey, as well as ours.


As to others level of certification, well. Depends on what turns out to be needed...

Aye. You got it in one. Just like you can get barred from a store or place by an unruly friend, so can it soon happen in SL.

So... If you can't trust your friends, then keep them off your computer.



I've had a few I would never let near mine. Mind you, they did not stay friends soon after I found out about them, but that's life.

Well...there will always be griefers, no matter what LL does. But one dedicated griefer spawning three or four alts now and then is preferable to a plethora of one day griefers spawning a myriad alts all the time. Only a tiny minority will strip and rebuild regularly enough to continue abusing the system. And god that's sad.

I don't believe there will ever be a solution, but I think this resolve certainly limits the problem.
--
Dillon

Yes Kalik, if someone else uses your computer to access SL or your child does, and they get banned for griefing under this new system, the entire computer is banned. No one can use that computer to access SL again (at least not without replacing most the hardware in it).

I find this to be wonderful incentive for parents to take some responsibility for their kids for a change, and it removes the every popular griefer excuse "My brother used my computer yesterday and did that stuff, not me". Too bad. Your computer should have been passworded and locked out so your brother couldn't use it to grief others if he is so untrustworthy. I like the idea of hardware profiling to enforce bans. Now if only residents could use it to ban all the alts of someone on our ban list, that would be even better.

Giving us account status information is unhelpful in my opinion and will actually be damaging to the SL community I feel. That is a form of stereotyping and prejudice and is not useful for me to prevent people who have actually commited harmful action to me or my property from doing it again on an alt. What we need instead is the ability to ban an avatar based on their actions and have that ban extend to all alts and characters used by that hardware profile. THAT would be truly useful and would not punish the innocent based on a blanket and arbitary group status they belong to but upon their actions.

<grins>

And we all know, their are pathetic creatures that will do this JUST to grief SL.

Oh god... That does make me want to cry. How can they stand to live like that?

haha well said, Im thinking about the people who have teens that cause problems and they may not even know about it. Like if I had a kid that could easily come over onto the maid grid by lying about their age and wreak havok or be a general pain like teenagers are (haha) then the whole families accounts are locked. AOL used to do that with chatroom.. alert they main account holder that another account has been in offendable or illegal chatrooms. I'm just curious...trying to understand the ramifications of the system because, like I said, I only have to worry about my dog rofl.

If it is based on the network card MAC address, then it won't work for one simple reason: you can CHANGE your NIC's MAC address in the driver settings or registry to whatever you want and it will foil the signature. As for processor serial numbers, very few processors support the serial number as Intel removed the feature after the hullabaloo it caused many years ago after it was introduced.

That just leaves pretty much an identifier stored in the registry, which is also just as easy to detect and get around.

Your dog get's 'frisky' on the main grid and get's banned, then you have a problem!

Go get him fixed now to make him more docile!

I agree completely.

There is also the matter of trust.

LL just hasn't shown the track record of honesty and competence necessary for this not to be a worrisome development. They have made serious serious errors in the past in terms of:

- inadvertently releasing personal information
- coding the client so that it inadvertently releases personal information
- having employees that share internal company information with players
- enabling employees to peruse customers personal information without cause.

I am no programming expert but I know from my friends that are, that LL makes some serious dumb-ass mistakes in coding. I might trust Apple to keep this kind of info safe, but these guys are just too slack and too sloppy to believe that they won't fluff it up.

Incorrect. They can compile a list of hardware devices and make a hash (or series of hashes) from that. That WILL do some good.

As to what they are doing. Well, I doubth they are going to say. It would be silly to offer info on what needs to be changed and what levels. Let the hackers figure that out on their own, and then CHANGE it and make them start over again.

<grins>

I am parent to two teens myself. I know what they are doing and am accountable for their behaviour. It is my responsibility as a parent to actual parent them. Any parent that does not wish to take responsibility for their kids deserves the consequences.

thanks for the advice frosty.. lol.. btw he is fixed and doesnt speak english.. so he's out on both accounts. I was just curious what the big deal was

Well...I have a son...and he doesn't use the internet unsupervised. Disclaimer: To my knowledge. Certainly not at my house, or his mother's, anyway. So that shouldn't be a problem for us. There are complications, like gaining unsupervised access at friend's houses...but there's not a lot you can do about that beyond talking to and trusting the other parties involved...and encouraging your kids to behave responsibly (ah yes, another complication), but at least it would be a computer in somebody else's backyard that got blocked.

I wonder if LL would give you another chance and allow you to learn from your mistakes if something like that did happen? Kids on the adult grid make me mad. Parents who blindly allowed them to get there make me madder. Parents in SL who ask about getting their kids on the adult grid make me boil.
--
Dillon

Which is the line for tinfoil hats, please?

From what? If they are just going to read the registry, I can add fake hardware "devices" all the day long to keep that hash a-changing, and I am not all that terribly smart.

I've a bit of experience writing these kinds of things in code, so I know what basically can be done and know how easy it is to foil them.

Great, so now they have to devote a development team to stay ahead of the griefers?

.. so what can we do - probably nothing-- they want information and take it... or we dont get in SL..

.. no I dont like it of course!

To many are creeping under my private skin or/and want my fingerprints and what seat I am on in a plane and lots more... IF you dont deliver that - you are not allowed to fly to ...

...AMEX have a huge building in Brigthon (England) where computers collect al info they can about my shopping.. my local card when I shop food collect what I shop and when I shop so they can send out special offers to me. IF I dont want them I dont get a card..

In England and Denmark there are huge central listening to al electronic traffic. Echelon is the name.. and now this is also saved.. at tapes.. at Echelon stations.-.or similar..

.. the ones that want to be bad boys (or girls) and are clever of course will make what they want anyway..

/Tina

They could call each status Free, Registered, and Premeium. Means the same thing and nobody would complain about their privacy. It would be like almost any other community with varried access levels based on payment.

Some sites give paying members special colors or tags and you know they're paying. Nobody seems to mind when they get a "special" color ;0 It's like a gift.

I thought this thread had been put to bed. This is not PERSONAL information, it says nothing about YOU, and there is nothing that can be done with it that can harm you whether mistakes are made or not. It is nothing more than hardware serial numbers that are easily available to ANYONE writing software for your computer and have probably been used and recorded countless times before without you even realising it. As far as trust, Linden Labs are telling you about their intentions, and this will serve as a warning to potential griefers that they cannot count on untraceability to go unpunished anymore.

I don't like them listing about your billing in your profile, that sould be the person's choise. its a private matter if you put billing information in or not and LL can see this and know who has and hasn't with out desplaying it to everyone else. This is only going to cause more problems (Classes people looking down on others treating people different griefing and forum flaming doing this) Also making it easy for the bad people to pick targets. So if I get me bank and or credit card info stolen who is responsable for it?

Not me thats for sure since its being forced on me. I would hold LL at fault. This will drive more people away then it will attract.

I love it when people use terms like "snooping about" as if LL is going to write some kind of algorithm that looks in every directory on your computer, opens your files and looks for keywords or checks to see what kinds sites you have bookmarked just to uniquely idetify you. Geez. =p

We're talking about a single, simple identifyer that is stored on LLs servers and tied to your account. An identifier (likely your ethernet MAC address) that any internet based software application can query and provide. An identifer that is unique to your computer hardware and was there before you ever added any data onto your hard drive.



If LL has your credit card information, then they already store far more sensitive information than your MAC address. I don't see anyone complaining about that. Besides, you agree to the risk when you install their software.



There's never any guarentee. All LL can do is to find ways, like this, to make it more difficult for the layman. A crafty hacker can probably circumvent any DRM or UID system but at the end of the day, they are the minority.

Whoa. There seems to be a lot of negative reaction to the hardware identification feature which I feel is perhaps unwarranted.

I may be wrong, but as I understand it:

1) The potential identifiers of Processor/Motherboard/CPU ID, MAC address, etc. as mentioned just identify your computer setup. There really is no way to tie your hardware info to your personal information (without great effort in tracking the product all the way from the manufacturer -> distributor -> retailer -> you, in worst case). You should be more worried about your credit card number!

2) If anything other than information about hardware is gathered (e.g. files on disk, etc.), this would have to be mentioned as separate from gathering hardware identification info, which they haven't (edit - or have they? being lazy and not referring to the whole announcement here)- so no worries about snooping around files on your hard disk. Yet.

3) A randomly hashed client ID would be a neat solution, but not as secure. I suspect it would certainly foil the less dedicated/knowledgeable griefers, which may be enough, until someone comes up with a software hack and distributes it. Like encryption, incorporating hardware identifiers just increases the level of difficulty.

It sounds like I've come out in favour of HI, but really I just feel that as an 'early' solution it's worth a try, in the spirit of the rapid prototyping developmental model, so to speak. I can think of a few ways it could be circumvented, but hey, nothing's perfect.

LL is dealing with some pretty unusual problems and given there isn't exactly a time-tested, established model for this kind of business, I'm encouraged by this effort to find a solution, if not by the effectiveness of their internal communications and customer relations.