Automated Burglary

We shall discuss your spank.. er.. penalty at a later date.

You're forgiven, even though *I* have never been known to post in haste, misread a post, or lose my temper online.

Btw, for those who are stunned by my saintliness, I have a prim-build of the Brooklyn Bridge on sale for only L$1.

*gasps*

My point was that the bot(s) significantly change things. Noone thinks that leaving something around for sale is a good idea, but without ESC's little toy the chance of the same thing happening is remote at best. People do bounce around all over the grid, but they're not intent on being malicious, just curious. The searchbot made something that was unlikely to happen into an almost guaranteed certainty.

It shouldn't take much to turn searchbot into listingsbot, where ESC or anyone can put up a white pages site to quickly find where someone lives; they already have all the parcel and owner names. Or mappingbot where you type in the name of someone and bots go flying off and within minutes give you the location of someone on the grid. Or trackingbot to keep an eye on your competitor/partner/friend/whoever while you're offline.

There is a serious disconnect between people who see SL as nothing more as a tool for profit where anything goes, and those who see and use it for entertainment value and who - rightly or wrongly - feel entitled to a certain degree of protection from the first category.

My too and I really like your suggestion. For some reason the site is borked for me today. I'll try again later.

You know this brings up a good point.

This system could EASILY be gamed.

Buy something with a prim in it that includes mod/transfer from a famous object manufaturer-

Recreate their object they sell, link in the mod prim last so the creator shows up as them. Throw in dummy scripts to make it look authentic.

List it for sale for a few hundred lindens your back yard, with the famous name intact.

It would pass the looks test, the contents test, the original creator test.

Bam - you just robbed some Searchbot "bargain hunter" of a few hundred lindens.


Not that I would do this - but - would be a karma thing.

Well I am one of the uninformed about this. Is there a quick way to scan your property to see if you accidently have items set for sale?

I agree that this uh-hmmm "service" should automatically be opt-out, and IF you want to participate, then you opt-in. Some people, especially newbies, don't realize that they have items set for sale, and I don't think that their unawareness should be exploited by automated systems.

All the posts justifying taking advantage of the fact that people didn't know their stuff could be bought without their consent by comparing it to anything in RL are just disingenuous B.S.

In real life, there is a point of purchase, whether that is a cash register at a retail location or the object's private owner. In all cases, there is a place for someone to say "What? No, that is not for sale at that price."

Any spankings Colette is due will be cleared through this office. An the idea it is our fault this happens is Bullshit. This isn't a LL instituted "feature" that we happen to miss reading in some blog post. I never heard of this Electronic Goat or whatever the hell it is until this thread. How long has this been going on with our knowledge? Anyone who takes my stuff in this manner will be put on my personal ban list for any future properties I may own, and I will urge any friends to do the same. I should not have to jump through hoops tp protect my posessions. Yes there are asses in RL.......and we seem to be stooping to the least common denominator to accomodate them. Must we do the same in SL?

"Your World, Some Thief's Imagination".

HEHE Brenda - you missed the Ask Jake anything thread

I miss that thread Jake rocks.


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No. I have never used and never will use a bot, I have no use. I am well respected business woman in SL. If you actually READ the post, I was simply stating the dangers of setting stuff for sale for L$0, and some precasuions to take, as I have already reitterated a couple of posts after that. Stop trolling.

Also if I was so self interested why in the world would I go through the trouble to create a proposal and post it here:



On that note Jira is kinda screwey, log in on the main page : https://jira.secondlife.com
Search for VWR-470 (top right)
The vote link is at the bottom of the left column.

Many thanks for all the private messages of support over this issue. It saddens me that so many people take the 'it's your own fault' attitude, when there are so very few alternatives, when the practice has been widespread in SL up to now for the transfer of set-out prims, and where a new technology changes everything, and I was not clairvoyent enough to see this coming.

It is also true that the sim was set to Public Access, but when you are setting up a sim, and have lots of suppliers and other service providers coming in and out (and I have trusted these people completely implicitly, having dealt with them many times before), it is just too much trouble to set it as closed and add every supplier to a group.

Of course, now that this 'service' is known about, we can all take the necesary precautions, and lobby LL for a change to the For Sale tags in a prim, and To a Named Avatar is a useful suggestion that I and others will now lobby for.

What no-one has mentioned so far in this debate, and particularly the people who have tried to compare this scenario with rl, by saying that anyone who buys an item set for sale is committing no theft, is that of tresspass: I paid for my private island sim, it is mine. I gave no permission whatever, nor was any permission requested, for a bot to roam my land, invisibly, and collect whatever data it wanted. Any such request would have been denied, so I believe that this is why none was requested.

The other issue that has attracted little response, but I also think is highly relevant is that of privacy, which is dealt with in the Community Standards.

I would ask, seriously, all those who take the 'it's your own fault' approach, to answer this truthfully: would you condone the advertising of the precise coordinates of the foot of the bed of anyone in SL? If I were to tp directly into someone's bedroom, who I did not know, and tell the offended couple that it was their own fault for not setting their security orb, and by not doing so was actually an invitation for me to come in, would you condone this as acceptable behavior?

The bots make no distinction between whether an item is for sale on a market stall, or whether it is a sexgen bed, in a private home, currently being used by the occupiers. If you think that everyone in sl has the RIGHT to tp directly into anyone's home, whether invited or not, then I despair for you.

I miss the whole off topic forum.

Was (usually) more civil than the general but was a lot of discussions there.

Talking about just Second Life with people from Second Life leads to these extrmely limited topics choices all the time.

In second life I sure as heck dont just talk about second life - how insanely boring.

Yes I dont think the site would have much paricipation from "SELLERS" if they asked the "SELLERS" for permission first.

No, it is not common sense. The physical laws of real life do not apply to SL. There is no reason that I should expect that setting an object for sale at $0 and leaving it in a place that I do not think anyone will come to within a the time frame I am leaving it there. Unless I happen to be proficient with understanding the Second Life computer code, which I am not.

Further, I have fewer recourses to resolve problems like these in Second Life than in Real Life. That is because Linden Labs does not want to regulate anything that goes on in Second Life. That's their choice. But that leaves far more risk to my money than I am willing to accept.

Show me the information that was reasonably available to me, prior to reading this thread, that should have warned me that, the moment I set something as for sale, in an empty place, with no one around and no reason to expect anyone to come around, that something could have instantaneously teleported there to buy it.

To call a particular piece of knowledge common sense, it must be commonly known.

Thank you Dnali for your response.

edited...

did a quick search... just some stuff I have up for sale in a mall. *smiles*

Well how about taking an extra minute to change the name of the item to a code say an alpha numerical code that would be difficult to search. If you have modify rights a tiny prim could be added to make you creator (if your not a creator that would be searched).
Might minimize chances of your for sale at 0 items being bought up by bots.
P.S. Hey Bots! I have some pretty nice freebies in my store at Istar!! 427 feet up across from the Phantom Hotel. Use the red teleporter .

well said:

Linden Labs should issue repeated warnings about Landbots and Searchbots if they have no intention of doing anything about them.

To make the land bot appologists happy - Linden Labs can include a warning about old style Land Swoopers as well.

Though I doubt it will do any good, I e-mailed the feedback mail drop for the ESC search engine. I informed them that their service is being used to facilitate theft of no-copy content.

I suggested that they at least filter out any results for items supposedly 'for sale' at L$10 or less. That will eliminate catching any items in the process of being priced, or any items set to L$1 or L$0 items being transferred.

I have also opted out of their search now with every account that I own, and I plan encourage all my friends to do the same. I was very annoyed that to do this, I had to go in-person to their sim, had to cross 2/3 of the sim, and then had to maneuver into a third floor room in an building to locate the sign that allows me to opt out! No way to do it at the website. No way to do it from the default teleport point for their sim. You have to hunt for the blasted opt-out sign!

Incidentally, banning their bot from your parcel wouldn't help. They could still have the bot passing by on someone else's parcel, or in the sim next door, and if the bot is within 96 Meters, I'll bet it still lists your stuff, even if the bot is banned from your land.

That could also imply that someone is using a bot themselves to scan through the ESC search results. I doubt that any person low enough to steal stuff this way would hesitate just because ESC says they don't want others to do automated searches of their database.

Wow - these opt out hoops you have to jump dont sound intentional at all.

I think you're right there. I did a search the other day on myself and my island, it came up with some items listed for sale on my neighbours land belonging to me. These items are in my studio at 500m and don't go over their boundaries.

I am glad I read this thread, will ban the bot from my land as I have items listed for sale as have them all out in my studio for doing the pricing and permissions before I copy to take to the store. My studio isn't my shop, so didn't expect them to be advertised with direct tp there.

Nice and easy to find where someone lives too (

Come to think of it, I am now certain that the bot does not need to be on your land when it scans your stuff. One of the items it listed for me prior to my opting out showed the coordinates of the lamp in my second floor bedroom, but the parcel name of a parcel that was not mine! So it was on someone else's land when it scanned my lamp on my land.

I don't believe anyone has the right, but I also don't believe that nobody would ever do it. Do you leave your doors unlocked when not at home because nobody has the right to enter, or do you lock them because you know there are people out there who would take advantage?
The comparison is not to compare what happened to burglary, but to highlight that rights are a less important consideration than what's possible. Morals do not figure for some people.

The big question is, how long were the items left marked "for sale" for? If it was more than a few minutes, you were gambling on nobody stepping in and snatching them, and gambling can have losses.