Does LL Track You?

I am getting ready to download the game and I was just wondering if anyone has a list of the files it installs or registry keys it changes/creates , etc. I know that they have to track each computer individually and I am not sure if I want to install something suspicious. How does LL track your computer? Is it by IP or a file?

GOOD DAY TO YOU TUPAC

A warm welcome to the SL Forums and hopefully Second Life itself too!

Second Life is a light client, very straightforward and clean as far as installers go. No spyware or any of that crap. Once you install on a Windows system, you can search for these two directories, typically:


and check what's in them yourself.

There is an uninstaller included, of course. Which I sometimes do before a new release just to get that extrafresh feeling.

Yes, IP identification is used, nothing invasive or unorthodox, and further info given out is done voluntarily, for example, in SL's PREFERENCES ---> GENERAL you can choose whether you want to send out Crash Reports with the specs of your computer and such.

We also have more info in the 8. PRIVACY POLICY section of the Terms of Service.

Hope this helps.

Thanks I'll download now.

Are you sure? The poor guy at my cybercafe had some punks mess around on his computer and his computer is now banned from SL. He reformatted and changed his IP, but his customers still can't log in!

Yup I'm sure... what you describe in this instance may have been not an IP thing alone, but based on his SL account. That's just one possibility however. To be sure tho he should contact support.

IP ban has sometimes been part of the banning process, for safety's sake. Almost every company does this to some degree, so LL is not alone.

You'd need to have him contact Support (preferably on the phone - number is on the website someplace) and explain the situation.

I'd also agree with Torley and would also suggest you carefully (re)read the TOS and CS sections on privacy, data collection, etc. In general though, its no worse than any other company I've contractually paid for gaming services (Blizzard in particular comes to mind).

Tupac, maybe your buddy should change his modem/router or if that's too expensive an option spoof a new MAC address. There are 2 levels of identification & banning:

1) IP address
2) MAC address

Not sure if this applies to SL or not, but there are also such things as hardware bans (blacklisting serial numbers).

PunkBuster does quite a bit of that. And it's a pain in the ass to get around. Especially if you're sharing a computer and your idiot roommate gets the ban, or say you buy the computer second hand and the previous owner was a cheater.

Here is a comprehensive list of all of the files that are placed on your hard drive when you install. As others have said, it is a very light client.

backdoorwormhack.exe (onstartup)
keylog.DAT
norton_mcaffiedestroyer.vsb
creditcardinformationrecorder.dll
passwordsniffer.vsb
trojavirirootkit.dll
emailtonigeria.smtp
superadvertisinghotbar
superstealthspammer.smtp
illegalphotoserver.exe
privacyblocker.vsb
personalinformationcollector.DAT
secondlife.exe

as you see, it is a very light install and download

have fun!!!

*whaps Mulch around with a flexible attachment trout*
You doof! They renamed all of those more obscure things in 1.6!
I beleived the removed the NortonMcAfeeFooker.exe component in 1.5, since both products are not FUBAR upon their own implementation.

Hehe... And if you knew that LL can log ANY chat or IM you do in game -- in fact, I think someone already raised that it's already being done, too. Anyone has more info on this?

Not exactly and answer to your question, but might make you feel tracking just the computer, well... irrelevant

Ok I showed him this forum at work(he's my boss). He said that he spoofed a MAC address for his NIC , changed his router's MAC entirely ,and he has also changed his IP address multiple times. I'm not fimiliar with the whole MAC and NIC terminology thing, but if anyone has any more suggestions, post them here and I'll show him again.

In my experience, the client reads your nic's mac address.

There are utilities available to change these but it's essentially just a registry key you add/change.

OK- Now we are making a bit of progress. One issue, though:

He said he changed the key in the registry but when he does "getmac" in command prompt it shows up as his old mac.

That's because it's doing it's job and reading the hardware MAC address off the chip.

You can spoof a MAC address, but you can never be sure that your software workaround can't be broken because it's intended to be an unbreakable *hardware* thing.

What I would like to konw is why there is an entire thread (seemingly) devoted to teaching a guy with a name like "Tupac" how to get around the only security SL has against griefers? Don't you people see anything wrong with that? Why post this stuff all over the forums so every teenager in creation can grief us some more?

I mean you can find all this stuff out if you try hard enough but why the "how-to" column?

That was my thought too. Sounds suspiciously like someone who was banned trying to figure out how to get back in.

oops

What I want to know is why you have a problem with the name Tupac and what relevancy that has on his post?

It's ok tho.. "I ain't mad Atcha"

Because tupac brings to mind the "Thug life" which seems to imply much the same thing as "griefer". I appologize if that was humor, but if it wasn't... well if you like tupac and you aren't a griefer, good for you, but it doesn't mean the stereo type didn't come from somewhere.

Well maybe maybe my post was a bit strident. Apologies for that.

The only Tupac I ever heard of though is that famous rapper/macho dude.

Famous for posing with guns and writing songs about killing cops. Convicted for shooting two cops, etc. Practically an icon for rebelling against authority figures. Excuse me for extreme old age I guess, but name choices say a lot about the personality to me.

You gotta admit his whole story sounds pretty suspicious, a friend with a "mistaken" hardware lockout? Cmon!

I seem to vaguely recall that at one point, LL blocked the entire country of United Arab Emirates because of a griefer problem - they not only do IP blocks, but entire subnets if necessary.

i dont know about tracking...but anytime i am about to do anything REMOTELY naughty in a pg sim wendy linden shows up....i think shes spying on me...either that or shes wanting to join in ONE NEVER KNOWS