Automated Burglary

That. IS. What worries me.

coco

Good, I still think this is an important subject people should know about, the pros, the cons, the inbetweens, but most of all...

someone tell the newbies to check what they rezz after they rezz it.

Yep. One major part of the problems the searchbot has unearthed. Kinda fits in with the people snarling in this thread: You have no privacy, get over it. In the Brave New World this hints at, you would have to be careful not to do/say/be/own anything or have a meeting with anyone you wouldn't want to see sold by ESC or someone worse to your worst enemy...or your biggest competitor if you are a businessman.

The platform that wins the VR race to become the foundation of the "metaverse" is pretty surely going to be one that solves the privacy problem. On any that doesn't, no-one will be there but the terminally naive and the bots...

I think SL deserves a better fate.

simple Solution.
I assume the managers are on your friends list? How about you place the items in each house but not arrange them and give modify rights to your managers, that way they can move them around without needing to own the items. They're still doing 1/2 the work that way....if not more if you want to factor in time. Doesn't take long to randomly put furniture in anywhere.

Nahhhh.. That would make too much sense. We gotta use hammers to drive screws and plowshares to solder circuit boards, all just because we can.

I guess I just find it so ironic that someone has to go into a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER world to find and want privacy. "I want to go play in a world where there are lots of people that I can exclude from my virtual space!". Ermm. Yeah.

There is no real privacy. Only anonymity. Once that's gone, you're screwed.


Sure... I'd like to have "shared private spaces."
but even they can't be trusted, not really, and
I'm just not willing to pay that much more for
something that I know is only marginally effective.

Maybe the option to share that virtual space with only selected individuals or groups at a time apeals to some people - Instead of whoever happens along.

Maybe some people like an SL friend of mine who does builds for RL clients likes to have in-world business meetings with clients without having to worry about a naked guy with a 3-foot penis come walking through - or having a competitor listen in.

/invalid_link.html

Looks like what I and many others in this forum have demanded Electric Sheep Company do with its by-now infamous searchbot is being attempted by these Meta Mart people.

Downloaded it, haven't had a chance to try it yet. Plan to use it first anytime I'm shopping for anything.

Will be interested in hearing people's reactions to it.

The solution for both already exists. It's called a "PRIVATE SIM" aka "PRIVATE ISLAND". It "virtually" (pun intended) guarantees privacy. Don't want to buy one? Rent one, lease one, borrow one, go into a partnership and buy one. There's a lot of them out there; some which offer more privacy options to residents than others.

Outside of that, start up "Private Life", which tackles the task of enforcing your own views of what privacy should be in a virtual world. If people want it, they will come.

It's not hard to get what you want, if you really make an effort to obtain it.

Completely different product and approach. It's SLExchange-on-a-HUD. That's it.

I dont find these two posts consistant.

If Post 1 were definitively valid - Post 2 would not need to be made.

The first one addressed the concept of "going out" to "seek solace", which is a philosophical oxymoron. In reality, you don't "go out" to a public place to look for "privacy", for example.

The second one addressed the reality of SL: that you CAN get it, even though it doesn't make a lot of sense to begin with. Real, true privacy really is only within the purview of the real world, and your own personal extensions of that into the virtual world. Everywhere else is no more than semiprivate, and limited even then (the Lindens CAN still watch you while you are locked away in your Private Island).

If the Lindens did give at least Lip service to virtual privacy - they would have better deniability when they say they dont know whats going on concerning behavor of their residents.

Case in point - this latest story out of Germany.

"We didnt know what they were doing. We dont monitor what residents do. They have an expectation of privacy"

No, if they follow the general "service provider exemptions", at least superficially, then they can have some legal protection when it comes to complicity in such kinds of illegal acts. However, that neither intimates nor guarantees any kind of privacy. By default, all service providers are allowed to "monitor any and all part of their service at any time to ensure its safe, effective, and reliable operation". They usually back that up with a "we don't use it to monitor the activities and behavior of our customers", usually with a disclaimer that they are not obligated to do so, but can, if the need arises.

Governments are the ones who are putting pressure on service providers to reveal those details.

Of course, the issue really is in a different vein, because these are real-life issues imposing action onto the virtual world, not the other way around. The effects impact Real Life privacy issues, because the governments want RL identity disclosure in their grand crusade.

You missed my point

If you claim your residents have virtual privacy you cant be expected to monitor their "private" virtual activities.

The German issue includes some virtual activities.

And part of the claim is Linden Labs should have known what was going on.

..and you missed MY point, which is that Governments can and do expect service providers to monitor their customers for illegal violations more and more every day, any claims to "virtual privacy" be damned. What, with the MAFIAA, the DHS, and dozens of other organizations, governmental or government-sponsored, all constantly eroding the safe harbor provisions given originally to the service providers and communication carriers, there's really no chance for it to EVER lead to any semblance of "virtual privacy".

Reiterating: Living under the safe harbor provisions was never meant to provide "virtual privacy"; it was meant to cover their arses. Claiming "but we don't invade the privacy of our customers!" is irrelevant, since running a service necessitates monitoring as a technical requirement. The governments know this, and that is the basis of their claims, which are essentially that users don't even deserve REAL privacy, let alone virtual privacy.

Now, LL has to go to fairly draconian age verification to cover their arses. Even less real privacy for us. Expect it to only get worse as time goes on.

As for the mass media, it is often a schill for the government or, in many cases, some faction of the government. Even still, the claim "LL should have known about this" transcends simple monitoring and privacy violation; it's been well-discussed for many months in the PUBLIC communications facilities. How could they not suspect and, by inference, know that it was happening? After all, their customers knew!

There are other threads for dealing with the demands governments make on LL and what LL should or must do in response about Resident privacy.

This is the thread for dealing with impositions being made on Residents' privacy by outside third parties that are not governments for the purpose of making money off the Residents without their consent.

It has become pretty clear why Electric Sheep Company and its agents would like to change the subject, or to declare SL privacy nonexistent. "Life-logging" indeed. ESC evidently wants to be able to spy on all its fellow Residents in SL and eventually make a buck from tattling on them to whatever interested party. It really should be called The Electric Tattletale Company.

So, go buy a sim if you want privacy, the shill says. Meaning the hundreds of thousands of Residents who are not in a position to do that are the sheep for their meatpacking operation. (And of course, that assumes these demonstrably disingenuous people don't already have clandestine searchbots out secretly cataloguing whatever they want, sims or no sims. How much does anyone want to bet on THAT?)

Does any sensible person need any more reason to see Residents have to take their own measures to protect themselves from unwanted intrusion? And do what we can to enlist LL in that effort, once the current child-porn furor is resolved?

There are things Residents can do about this, and will need to do. The Electric Tattletale Company is just the beginning, remember. There are far worse than they out there, waiting in the wings. So let's get on with developing ways to protect ourselves, both with and without LL.

Just a thought:

Virtual disk isn't real disk, it's usually memory.

Virtual memory isn't real memory, it's usually disk.

Virtual reality isn't real reality.

Virtual privacy isn't real privacy.

(yes yes... I know it's meant to be "privacy in virtual reality" not "virtual reality" (edit: "I meant "Virtual privacy" not "virtual realtiy" there... oops) but I couldn't help but comment on it.)

Thats the "Let them eat cake" argument thats been brought up since early in the thread.

I suppose Sim owners could rent their communities in a gated / closed style.

Since you cant ban all bots - the only way to keep them out is to only give access to certain people.

Of course - this means as far as any simulation of privacy goes; the Mainland is out.

Perhaps when servers go open source there will be technical minded people a bit more willing to play to their audience.

Oh, come ON people! This thread is, like, so three weeks ago. Ageplay is BACK and this time it's personal.....

I don't mind LL monitoring activities on their own grid. I don't mind LL compiling statistics from their own grid. I expect them to, and want them to, and trust them to not be intrusive about it.

For example, I would trust them not to publish a list of all my items for sale unless I specifically asked them to.

I don't want other people compiling information about residents and publishing it without our consent.

Simple.

coco

Please, enough. "Freedom from Observation" is a luxury, not a right.
And the lindens themselves can ignore private sim access restrictions if they like.

Many of us would like to have "more affordable" "shared private space" I'm certainly one of the people for it... . But I'm not deluding myself into thinking we'll get it soon.

Some day after open-sims, we might have 'invisiblity' or 'private rooms' but if you think linden lab is in any hurry to do that, and risk harming their private sim sales... think again.

So, yes, educate yourselves and others... lock your stuff down. Don't leave stuff lying about that you don't want seen. Pursuade 3rd party 'services' to conduct themselves ethically however you can...

But stop deluding yourself into thinking that "Freedom from Observation" is some unalienable right our avatars were born with, when in truth, it's the opposite.

Phew! So many "snips" I barely recognized anything but my name.

What "rights" avatars and their owners have in SL, if any, are defined by the TOS and whatever is taken to be established Community Standards. And that is the problem.

Here we have one entity, in this case The Electric Sheep Company, presuming to impose on everyone else its version of Community Standards. Their actions were unilateral, patently unfair, hurtful to some, and obviously done in an exploitive manner and with exploitive intent. They did it because they want to make a buck at the expense of legitimate needs and wants of the rest of the Residents, and perhaps of SL itself.

That is what we have to deal with here.

If I may paraphrase to boil out "the spin":

You believe our rights are not defined clearly enough in the ToS and CS.
You believe esc deliberately mis-interpreted the spirit and the letter of the ToS and CS.
You believe esc's motives, intentions and actions are a threat to secondlife residents, and that threat need to be 'dealt with' somehow, and you want suggestions.

Is this accurate enough?

If so, then my suggestion is that you focus on getting the ToS/CS updated so that actions "like" esc's are more clearly allowed or dis-allowed. It may not be as fun as vilifying a group of people with sensational word choices... but it would be more effective.