New Bot: The Estate Owners Fight Back!

The bug actually wasn't discovered until the search engine found it. The bug entails the fact that the For Sale flag is still left checked on some purchased objects, although its grayed out and an avatar cannot actually purchase the item, even though reading the flag gives the information its available to purchase. I have a personal example inworld which I can show people for further clarification. It has been bug reported, but to my knowledge this bug wasn't ever picked up on until the search.


While I can understand the cynical point of view (its one I hold myself a lot of times), I still personally don't see how collecting any data on SL usage besides what LL already provides in its monthly metrics would be of any use to a corporation, besides a better in depth statistical look at the use of their own project island. Could it be done? Certainly, but what would be the point? If it doesn't have a direct value to the corporation, why would they request to have it done?




Thanks I haven't been to Sheep Island in the last week or so since I've been on a project, but I can go and check to see if the opt out board has been moved and if that's in the plans to do so. Thanks for the suggestion.

You would have to remove the ability to scan for user objects in SL entirely, then. Like I said, the ability to scan for objects is not new. Its been around for years, and can be (and has until this point) been done entirely through LSL, with the tools built into the SL system. People sell products inworld with this ability. And again to clarify, the information on items that are scanned but do not have the For Sale flag checked are not indexed.

What happened to due diligence?
Whether it's your wife or not, you responded to a post not addressed to you as if it was. I asked if you were in fact Vi. You assume I must have friends at ESC because I happen to not freak out like chicken little at the mention of the b word? Get your facts straight, I don't know, and have never known anyone at ESC.

Fault is not the point, the possible end result is. From what Cory has said, it sounds like ESC may have corrected for this issue on their end, but I still find it disagreeable that my home was opened up without my permission for anyone who may have accessed the site. There is no true privacy in SL, yes, but at least anyone polite who happened to come across my house, locked tight and floating 750m up, probably would have stayed out. Someone using the site would have had no indicators that they weren't welcome, and therefore no choice as to whether they invaded my personal space. A lot of RL societal niceties (such as not going into your neighbors unlocked house just because you can) exist by mutual consent and the same should be true of SL...as far as I'm concerned, the ESC search bot in its current form is just one more way of defeating that possibility. It's been banned from the island I live on and everyone has been advised to opt out, but we would never have known about it at all if not for the fact that a couple of us do use these boards. I'm sure the vast majority of SL residents still have no idea that this is going on, and that seems very wrong to me.

SL definitely does need a better search function, but this just wasn't the way to go about it IMO.

Not necessarily - Id only need to regulate what Bots are allowed to do.

It should not be required to give Bots all the same privledges as regular accounts - they are computer programs.

Of course a human could still scan my objects - That may be an issue - however a human isnt automated datamining. There are much smaller limits on the data they can mine.

I want People like Rock Ryder and his 100 Friends not to act like complete Morons,
selling fake items (its still Fraud) and doing sabotage against the search Engine is just wrong.



If your Stuff is set for Sale, you should be thankful if someone finds it and buys it.
If you want privacy, you have to do something extreme like buying you own island and
allow only trusted individuals to teleport there.
Otherwise, Privacy in SL does not exist.



Now, if i sell a Ipod Box on Ebay, with a Stone inside, do i deserve Respect ?
If i spam Google with some porn crap with misleading Keywords, do i deserve Respect ?
Lack of knowledge is no Excuse.

So, LL have just announced that after a successful test phase they are going to delegate the handling of abuse reports to Estate Owners and their managers! A date is yet to be set.

Well, well, well.

Now let me ponder this news. Vi, get the kettle on! I have something to discuss with you!

Feel free to start a new Thread about that. It looks like a good Idea, because LL fails miserably on handling abuse Reports in Time. Not enough Staff for that.

*Refuels Flamethrower*

The theory of establishing limited-power accounts for bot use is an interesting one, but probably one that's feasibly impossible given the open source release, unless the some major rewrites are made to the code itself. And I'm not sure what realistic safeguards could be put in place to determine whether a human or a bot is running the avatar account at any given time. Signup checks are easy to get around as long as a person is there to get past them, and then let the bot take over.

And while the practical limit on what a human can mine by hand is less than an automated program, those limits are quickly minimized when you have enough humans and enough time. The end results are the same, except that everything about the process slows considerably - not just the mining itself, but the catagorization, bug tracking, and removal of information from the index, plus you have a much higher margin of error. It seems like an odd line to draw in the sand when in the end, the humans controlling the bot are still making the ethical decisions behind the use of the information, which seems to be the main crux of the disagreement on this particular topic.

Perhaps this is because tempests in teapots are only heard by those close to the teapot. And that's what all this hubbub is. A tempest in a teapot. I sympathize with Rock on losing his items in that way, but I also think he bears some responsibility. And lest we forget, the real crooks were the ones going around buying the stuff up, and refusing to return the items without being shown the money, after they were informed that it was not an intentional sale.

But the zOMGWTF searchbot is scanning my objects! So friggin what? Gripe if you and your objects end up on the website, after you've opted out. Otherwise, no harm done to you, so why continue to make noise about it as if it's some sort of personal violation of the most intimate and personal kind? Items not marked for sale are not indexed(read: They are immediately discarded as if they didn't exist). As such, the scanning is no different than what would occur if joe resident happened to be walking down a public street, within draw distance of your home. All that information is streamed down to his client, but it isn't in the scene, so it may as well be all zeros.

Somebody fill me in... why exactly is it so bad that for-sale items are being listed on a website? Don't you want to sell your items and let them get exposure? I don't get it.

Why are you bitching at me about this? I've said very little as compared to some, and it's not as though I've suggested that everyone at ESC is a devil-worshiping puppy murderer who should be stabbed on sight. They have a good idea, but the execution to date has been invasive and lacking in transparency. I learned about all of this quickly enough to opt out before it affected me personally, but I don't like the idea that it could have, or may still cause problems for others. I'm not a zealot, I just believe we should all be allowed our personal space and, even if absolute privacy is impossible, there's no real reason to go looking for new ways to limit what is available.

Sorry Ann, only the first sentence of the first paragraph was directed at you, to answer your question. The rest was for general consumption.

Blinded by the flames?

Zaphod - sometimes you have a tendacy of being dismissive of others in order to try to get us to stop complaining.

I dont really understand why this is.

You live on a private Island with limited access - why?

You seem to miss the point that theres more at stake than just this one bot.

This bot doesnt list evey item you own on their website for anyone to see. But another one could. Will. Eventually.

It is bad because the ONLY way to transfer ownership of an item that is already in-world and positioned where you want it is to sell it to the person it is supposed to belong to. And until now, the usualy way to do that was to hire someone to position the items, wait until you were reasonably sure no one else was in the sim, perhaps set up the ban lines on the parcel so you wouldn't be disturbed, and then the builder and client go around to each object, setting it for sale at L$1 or L$0, so the client can buy the item in-place.

The effect of this database is that even if you have ban lines up, if that bot scans you while you're setting a price on an item, ANYONE can search that database, find that you just set a L$10,000 bed for sale at L$10 (the default that appears the instant you click the checkbox to make an item sellable, and BEFORE you have any way to enter a different price), and they can TP in and BUY it at that low price, before the intended recipient, standing right next to you, can do so. Instant theft of high-value merchandise for a token payment, with a beacon in the sky and handy TP link pointing the thief right to the object, no matter HOW many security precautions you take to hide the transfer!

This isn't about mis-priced items that were intentionally advertized for public sale, or out on display in a ratail area. This is NOT just about some fool setting an item for sale at L$10 and leaving it in his back yard for a week. This affects ANY transfer in progress, no matter how private the transaction, because that bot could show up when you least expect it, and enable a thief to buy it before you can set an accurate price or complete the transfer.

It's no big deal if you are aware of this bot and have opted out of its scans. But millions or people in SL don't even know this is possible, let alone that they are at risk.

It's also no big deal if you never hire anyone else to place in-world, no-copy content for you. If you do all your own landscaping, if you do all your own club setup, if you do all your own precision placement of complex builds, they you won't care. You just buy stuff, and place it yourself.

But if you run a sim or rental properties, if you hire people like me to build for you... every no-copy item the hired person has to work with is now at risk of being stolen. Multiply that risk by each no-copy item in the build. The original poster lost several homes full of high-end no-copy furniture. I have done builds where this would have placed hundreds of items in the build at risk, and where I was often two houses ahead of the sim owner, locating items and setting the for-sale settings while they came along behind me buying each item

Isn't that just great?

I am a shopowner.

I design and sell my own clothes.

I also resell other designers' clothing. These items, however, are sold in vendors. The vendors are owned by me, and are not marked 'for sale'. Am I, and my designers, missing out on potential sales of their items because Searchbot doesn't see the vendor itself as 'for sale'?

I'm sort of assuming so, which stinks. I guess I could stick a .01x.01x.01m prim near the vendor, make it transparent, and mark it for sale at whatever price the outfit sells at, but that means a lot of work for me, and increases my prim count dramatically.

And while I understand the argument re: privacy (yeah, I wouldn't want some bot snooping through my house either), I remind myself that all the 'stuff' that I 'own' is still in reality a bunch of 1's and 0's living on SOMEONE ELSE'S COMPUTER. LL's TOS clearly states that they can do whatever they want to with my items, my account, whatever, including deleting them entirely. So if LL says to ESC, "yeah go ahead and search our computers" then it's between ME and LL, right? NOT me and ESC. What concerned folks should be doing is not lambasting ESC, but talking with LL re: property rights, and who owns what, and who really has access to all those 1's and 0's.

Another thread here, long disused, talks about benefits for premium members...maybe this could be one of those benefits; pay LL money, and ensure your own privacy. ???

Just one girl's opinion. *shrug*

Unfortunately, there's no real way for the bot to read the content of scripted vendors. Boxes that are for sale, yes (it can chose to buy the items where it will see a list of the contents). The bot could "edit" the vendors and see what the contents are, but there is no way for it to know what is for sale at what price, and it would require content scanning of every object whether it was marked for sale or not.

Your desire not to be listed on the search is reasonable.

Your methods (as espoused in your post, placing false goods etc), are reprehensible

I for one will not join your group.

If you build stuff for a Customer, try this :
Make sure everything is where it belongs, link up as much as possible.
Drop this Script into every root Prim (and only once, only there):

// WARNING : this Script needs more testing, be very careful.
vector p;
rotation r;
object_move_to(vector position) 
{
    vector last;
    do 
    {
        last = llGetPos();
        llSetPos(position);  
    } 
    while ((llVecDist(llGetPos(),position) > 0.001) && (llGetPos() != last));
}
save()
{
    p=llGetPos();
    r=llGetRot();
    llOwnerSay("saved.");
}
load()
{
    object_move_to(p);
    llSetRot(r); 
    llOwnerSay("finished.");
    llRemoveInventory(llGetScriptName());    
}
default
{
    state_entry()
    {
        save();
    }
    on_rez(integer param)
    {
        load();    
    }
}

wait for the 'saved.' Message.
Now 'take' everything into your inventory.
Give Everything to your Customer.
The Customer has to rez everything in the same Sim.
It will move and Rotate where it belongs.
The Script will delete itself.

What do you think ?

WARNING (again): this Script needs more testing, be very careful.

If its feasibly impossible - maybe that says something about how ready we are for wholesale botting in Second Life.

So far Bots in Second Life have all been used irresponsibly.

-IP robbing Copy Bots
-Land Swooping Land Bots
-Opt Out, intrusive prim listing Search Bot.

This probably says as much about certain Second Life users as it does anything else. But it argues to me that Second Life isnt as ready for Bots as some people think.

well for building private sims once the word gets out youll simply limit access to the sim untill the buy/tansfer takes place.

But for Mainland builds - the builder will need to OPT OUT in order to build and then sell to the Requestor.

Thing is the words only partly out.

And it shouldnt have been a huge surpize resulting in the loss of valuable property.

Cindy, I think you misunderstand what is happening. The problem is that items that are not for sale to the general public are being listed by this search bot as for sale to the general public. These are items that are on private property not in stores or yardsales.
I often leave my wife, presents. Nice boxes filled with stuff she likes. The only way to do this is to mark it for sale and set it out on our property.

These people with Rock are not putting items in a store front, they are not advertising items for sale. They have items that for what ever reason, they chose to place on their private property with the for sale box checked. This search bot is then trespassing and advertising the item without the consent of the owner. What is so hard to understand about that?

It is not like placing an ad on EBay. These items are not being advertised, they are being listed by a trespasser.

I'm being dismissive only in the context of the dicussion about the search bot. I appreciate that there are all kinds of other potential issues/problems that we will have to face down the road.


I chose a private island to build a home on a zoned residential sim, and avoid the usual garbage associated with mainland. The access is limited to residents and invited friends to get rid of the griefing problem. It was a proposal that the estate owner put to the residents to vote on, and the majority of us voted a resounding yes - the idea of object scanning bots never crossed my mind at that time.



I don't miss that point at all. I only speak to the ESC search bot issue, because that's the subject of the discussion at hand. It's patently unfair to make this one out to be a bad guy, because down the road, some other bot might come along with actual malicious intent.

I may have misunderstood a few of your posts, but they did seem to be directed at grid shepherd specifically, as if this specific bot were somehow invading people's privacy by scanning and documenting all their items in their home. Now I think I understand where you're coming from when you begin to mingle talk about more sinister activities, like online/offline tracking, watching where you go, etc, into the discussion.

These are valid concerns, and we will no doubt be faced with such things in the future. It's going to be a fairly complex set of problems to solve. It isn't practical or feasible to outlaw bots in general, or even try and place controls on them - people will always find ways to do bad things. They were possible with libSL, and they're slightly easier to do now with OpenSL.

OpenSL does, however, provide avenues to enhance the Second Life platform, and the experiences of its residents, and I believe this project will do just that, given time, and community support. The platform itself has to remain open, and minimally restricted, in order for projects like this to succeed. Linden Lab's way of dealing with the bad guys is to provide the good guys tools they can use to protect themselves. They will need to step up to the plate on this.

The problem is, the enemy has yet to manifest itself - and there will be multiple enemies, each with different attack vectors, and each with different target vectors to fight them off and eliminate them. The war plan must be drawn, and the battles fought, in such a way that does not put obstacles or brick walls in the way of positive innovation. It's a tall order, and there will be casualties.

Sorry for misunderstanding you.

Trespassing.. whats that ? If your Land has no Ban Lines, everybody is free to visit you.
I dont know where you live, is it like people in the USA get killed by Shotgun for stepping
on someones private property ? well, SL is different.

For your present boxes, get a 'give all contents' script and modify it to give the contents only to a certain person.

If you leave valuable stuff out in the open, it gets stolen (or bought for 0L$).
Simple as that.