Help! Safety in Avatars United

I want to put together a brief set of directions for the "safe" use -- i.e., use that doesn't disclose RL info -- of Avatars Unitied. Here's what I have so far:

1) Create a new email account, or use an existing one that is ONLY for your avatar, when registering for the app. In other words, don't use an RL email or one associated with another avatar you want to keep separate from this one.

2) Keep "Personal Information" to an absolute minimum. I think they demand you give date of birth, but everything else is optional

3) Don't link the account with any other avatars you don't want this one associated with. Create separate accounts if need be.

4) Under "Account > Manage Applications > General Settings" unclick the box for "Allow installed applications to access my extended info (gender, date of birth, location, time zone and language)." (With thanks to Qie for pointing this one out.)

Any other suggestions beyond the obvious "Don't post pictures of your RL house"?

And thanks in advance for your help, everyone!

Lie. (^_^)y

I signed up with an alt with the minimum of information and have just had a steady stream of 'friendship requests' Is there a race for the most friends? I've declined them all. Think I'll let it settle down a bit before jumping in with Rime

What does that do if left checked?

Seems I don't have to worry much about this.

Most people signing up as Desmond Shang aren't me, so, it's their risk and not mine.


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The real 'me' was locked down private with no friend accepting possible. There won't be a Caledon group there either, until it's linkable to the inworld group.

I *really* don't like saying negative things about the platform. Between longtime residents driven off over this, the potential for fraud, trademark infringement and so forth... I'm still reeling.

If only the announcement weren't made until things were tied to our real accounts.

It's not that I dislike all change or whatnot. I'm good with change. I *want* to say positive things.

* * * * *

Not that anyone is going to read it, but here's the things that will hurt my estate:


1. Homestead tier hike in June, to the tune of 30 bucks a month x our 21 homesteads. Imagine 10 going vacant. 125/month times ten is 1250 USD/month. For that kind of money I think I'd rather buy my teenager a Ferrari.

2. Direct competition against me with starter homes. Ouch. Better for me in the long run? Ah... no, because of #3.

3. Mainland land glut. The value of mainland has been gutted. If there were even a *slight* scarcity, valuations would skyrocket; this is not a huge economy and it's very responsive. Goose and golden eggs issue ~ *precisely* this. They desperately need an economist.

4. Something changing that I cannot disclose, but it's item #4 and pretty significant.

5. Copybot style issues. My estate is roughly 40% commercial, and the merchants own another 10% to 20% of the homes. They are fleeing the platform because almost nothing they make can't be taken... by someone who will return and taunt the business owner with it.

6. Forums shakeup. I'm holding out hope that I'll still be able to casually discuss things here.

7. Longtime residents being driven off because years~old problems recur and drive them crazy. Yesterday was no exception.

8. My primary business tool (the client viewer) being suddenly changed. I'm holding out hope it will be positive change, but the track record here isn't looking good.

9. Somewhere after all the rest of this, there's this avatar facebook thing.


I am fighting valiantly to do my best, and a bit worried that #1 will kick me to the curb on the Second Life platform.

We shall see, I guess.

This.
I don't know why people do that in Facebook, either, except for the purpose of collecting people needed to play certain game applications.

But I don't know why a stranger playing WoW would want to "unite" with me at AU.

Wow, Desmond! What a lot to have to deal with!

I have an econ friend who also hangs out in SL and she blanches every time someone characterizes SL as having an economy. Her primary point being that there are no 3rd party checks and balances, that the lab can do whatever they want. While I do not completely agree with her (re: no economy), I do think she has a valid point. After all, the lab can print money (L$) or land, whenever they want, and there's on SEC to answer to.

My assumption is that this is about datamining. Applications are generally built by third parties, and they make money from them by collecting information from those who sign up to them, and selling it.

At least, that is how I gather it works . . .

Just for that, I'm sending a friendship request to you right now!

It doesn't have a modern economy, for sure. But "economy" can and has meant many many things over the course of human history, hasn't it? Ultimately, any system that is about the exchange of things of value is an "economy."

Sounds like Hong Kong. (^_^)y

because maybe your SL friend also plays WoW, and wants you to know their character name there so you can find them if you play, or if they haven't been in SL awhile and want to catch up?

I assume that's the point of the whole thing really... and exactly why I'm not on there... I sometime play other games to take a break from SL... and wouldn't want one invading my free time on the other... anyone that I really want to able to find me anywhere knows my aliases


this works rather well =)

If it will help, I'll delete my "Desmond Shang" account . . .


Linkability is key. If they don't get that kind of functionality into AU fast, I see no point to it whatsoever. And the potential for abuse is huge.


Did they have a choice? Can they just sit on that sort of info? Surely there only option, and not a good one, would have been to start to develop changes before the purchase, and then implement them the moment they bought the site.


Yikes indeed. Especially #4, which has me all nervous now.

I guess even 19th-century land barons need a bit of love and sympathy sometimes, Des.

That's my general policy, it confuses the dataminers.

This thing is getting weird. I am listed as Veritable Quandry twice at AU now (once each for SL and BM). At first, I was getting friend requests from people that I recognized from here or educational groups in SL, but now it's random strangers and occasionally bits of software (I don't want to friend my viewer, thanks).

I do hope they fix it, otherwise I'll just lock down my accounts, hide them from search, and leave them to protect my name. And then register as Desmond Linden or Philip Shang.



I do hope that Caledon can survive another jolt. If things turn worse, I may well just jump ship as soon as I can purchase a decent frock coat and tophat in Blue Mars.

You're right....they need an Economist, I've been saying that for a long while.....we'll have to see how sharp this new CFO is!

I wouldn't worry about no.1 for now! If I were a betting man, i believe they'll postpone July 2010 proposed HS tier increases to 2011. It might provide you with additional time to come up with an exit strategy out of HS altogether by Jan 2011 i.e convert any empty HS into full sims.

Well, if you ever see anyone on Avatars United claiming to be Ceera Murakami, or one of her alts, it's an imposter. I freated an account for about 1 hour there, with an obscure alt, and had it completely erased after examining the site.

Likewise, Ceera never will and never has existed on Facebook.

Additional guidelines:

#1: Just do not sign up there. That place's options for outing your real ID are a nightmare.

#2: If you feel you MUST have one or more accounts there, Log in, and from your profile page take the "Account" link at the top right. In the list of avatars you have linked to this e-mail, open the "Privacy Settings" and uncheck the ones that by default expose all your data. Also somewhere in there is a page for e-mail settings - which by default all but one are on. Turn those off, unless you love spam.

#3: Refuse to answer any of the on-screen surveys that want your RL info.

#4: If you contact support to get them to delete your account(s), you do NOT need to give them your RL name and phone number. At the start of this, they were demanding that info. But I hear they already ammended their TOS to drop those two requirements.

Thanks Ceera, these are very useful!

I'm leery about suggesting the use of AU, but people are going to join it anyway: if they do, I'd like them well-informed.

There is some pressure from within the activist community to use AU as both a new medium for communication within and between our various groups, and another way of getting "the word out." I think there is real potential in the latter, but I don't think the former is going to work well simply because I don't think we'll ever get a critical mass of people from these groups enrolled in AU. And now I am increasingly reluctant to even suggest that people join it in the first place.

One problem is that there is an augmentationist / immersionist split within the activist community. Activism tends to be "outward looking" anyway, focussed on RL, and we have additionally a large number of educators in our groups who tend for the most part to really want RL and SL identities linked for reasons of their own. It's going to be interesting to see how we manage this.

I already have an email account specifically for SL stuff, but if not there is a way to make it so your email address is totally private.
I have all of my alts on there but not all are visible to everyone. (You can choose to be visible to everyone, just friends, or just you - even by searching the specific name). You can have seperate accounts for alts and not link them to your main one, but I'd forget all the login deets if I did that. I just want to make sure noone claims to be me by using an alt name.
I have no RL data on there at all, and it seems to be working ok. Provided you are careful waht info you input, and you go through all your account and profile settings making sure checkboxes are checked/unchecked it should be safe enough.
Oh, and though you need coins to change backgrounds etc (ridiculous idea, i think), stay away from the surveys if you really dont want to give out RL info. A lot of them seem a bit spammy.

Thanks Claire.

I'm sure there are good reasons why people would want to link their alts through the one log-in -- I will probably link my Blue Mars avatar in this way, as she is also "Scylla Rhiadra" -- but I'd be at least potentially worried about even the application itself (and hence LL) knowing about my alts if I didn't want them associated in any way. I do have one seldom-used SL alt (used primarily for getting into places I've been banned, but shhhhhh!). I probably won't bring her into AU at all: there's really no reason to. But if I did, I'd treat her to her own log-in and email, I think.

I did this and then came back to look at some other settings and was alarmed to see everyone of them checked again.

I had forgot to press SAVE. Simple, but insidious.


.

And do this for every alt you have registered! It is a per-avatar setting, not per master account, even though it accesses the master account's info.

Yes, I made that mistake myself, so I've added that point to the note I'm writing.


Ahh. An excellent point. Thanks!

With this, I assume you mean something in the SL platform and not, say, your own business decisions and personal life?

As a general musing, which Des obviously can't answer, I seem to recall some mention of LL going more into the business of providing themed content/communities (above and beyond the Linden Homes), which, depending on the implementation, I could easily see fit as #4 or even higher on that list.

But, but, but... isn't this a given for registering with *any* social networking site? Or for that matter, any website that requires registration? I'm sure it says so.

On page 42!

Seriously, though, I agree that your RLID is vulnerable to AU. However, it is only as vulnerable as the info you've provided it. The same goes for twitter, facebook, or where ever else you choose to register.

I will admit, I simply do not provide any of my RL data as a practice. And haven't done so for... well... ever. I also have a couple of spam em addys that I reg use if I need an em addy for verification.

Now, if you want to see how secure your data really is? You know, to put things in perspective a bit? Check out Attrition's dataloss database.

http://datalossdb.org

There's no exit strategy from homesteads to full regions, full stop.

Tried it, offered it, spoke with literally everyone involved, and a few potentials. Overwhelmingly, homestead residents *do not want* 1/4 of a standard region.

Nor is anyone keen on seeing nearly 50% of the continent's landmass eradicated... the shockwave from that won't exactly add delight, and if anything, it will cause *more* people to leave.

It's not in my hands, really.

I too gambled that they wouldn't hike prices to 125/month last summer, one of the few land barons that did, and called it accurately.

Though it was white knuckle time all the way, and quite frankly, last April I thought I would lose... and that's when I quietly started another project that some of you might have heard about. About a month later, I read Jack's announcement saying it was deferred for a year.

As such, I get to relive last year's white knuckle experience this spring/summer as well.

For anyone who thinks I'm calling the shots on this... I'm not. It's the resident's decisions; they vote with their dollars. I can't *make* anyone stay with me.

I'm eager to keep Caledon strong and happy here forever; we would have been *only* a Second Life community were it not for the events of 2008. I won't go down without a fight, here... that said, I have to keep options wide open, unless I somehow magically gain the ability to change the tide of resident choices.