Alt Question - Do LL take notice of an IP address?

Hi

I was wondering whether if someone gets banned/suspended from the game or from someones land does that mean that they can just set up an alt account to get around it?

I suspect they can do that to get around a ban on someones land in world - in that case is it a matter of alt abuse?

I really think thought that if someone is banned or suspended from SL in general then there should be a block on their IP address? Is this the case?

Many thanks,
Rhia x

I have been told banning on IP number is kinda useless. It seems to be very easy to fake an IP address and will not work on those that get a different IP address when they connect to their Internet provider.
In the later case they could ban on the first part of the IP address, but then there is a change innocent people with the same beginning will be banned too.

That is how I understood it, but any expert may correct me if I am wrong .

So no, I don't think they look at IP addresses... more to Credit card-numbers and alike.

For in game land banning there is only looked at the avatar name as far as I know.

Curious... why you are asking this?

Morwen.

Lol! i guess i should have said why

Because i have land where i have banned one person and have good reason to believe that she has used an alt to flout that (the account was created on the day i banned her amongst other factors)

Other than that i was just interested!

Thanks for your reply x

Ups... missed that

I am pretty sure that when you ban someone from your land, an alt of that person can normally access your land.

Morwen.

Look at it another way, if the person you banned has come back as an alt but is no longer doing anything that would cause you to ban her, then no problem. No problem apart from an opportunity to exercise vindictiveness, that is

A person can create an unlimited number of alts. The only cost to them is their own time to create a freebie email account and a freebie SL avatar. All of their inventory can be held for them by another alt created for the purpose.

LL don't appear to have time to care. The alts make their count of SL Residents look better.
An IP address does not definitively identify a real person.


Drifting slightly from the main thrust of you question:

In theory, LL could target serial griefers by analysing transactions for ARed residents
and see a pattern of new residents who
- get created
- spend minimum time in Orientation and Help
- immediately get free inventory from a resident (other than well-known freebie suppliers)
- immediately get certain well-known named inventory
They might find that certain residents have a pattern of feeding inventory to resident s that end up being ARed. They might then have cause to lart or ban the inventory-holding resident.



On the other hand, forget about waiting for the ARs to come in.
(1) Just scan for avatars that flash through Orientation and Help and then acquire certain types of inventory within x minutes/hours of being created.
(2) Nuke them.

That would probably be wonderful for ordinary residents. Don't hold your breath waiting for this sort of valuable proactive action by LL.

Just to fill that out and summarise:

Target behaviour patterns.
Don't try to target individuals. That doesn't work.

LL does take notice of IP addresses and they have been known to take action against all accounts used on an IP address when abuse is reported (there are reliable reports of this happening). They also associate accounts by shared account data (for example two accounts being paid for by the same credit card).

An IP address is easily changed within your router (assuming you use one) or a single gateway PC. This is the only IP address which is classed as 'static', your ISP gives you a Dynamic IP at its server end eachtime you connect between your router or gateway PC, that is, unless you have opted and pay for a static IP address directly from your ISP (they are rarely free), which extends the IP from your router/GatewayPC further up the line of exposure.

Using a IP to ban someone, could wipe out the access to Colleges, Universities and Companies in one foul swoop, so unless LL suspect there is some 'ring' of offenders using one IP, it wouldn't be the best choice.

If you know the comands, you can change your Router/PC Gateway IP quite easily.

As Strife said, they mainly rely on email address and CC details to ban the average user.

Agreed, banning by IP is not effective as they can be easily changed with very little knowledge. Back when I was an internet newbie the IRC networks used to ban by IP and it was very easy to get around by using a different IP....not that I ever did anything to be banned of course

I sincerely hope they don't ban the average user!!

But then again, that might cut down the lag a bit

Which is useless against griefing alts who use
- free unverified accounts, so no CC details to block on.
- free throwaway email accounts, so no repeated email to block on.

In the anti-spam community (and probably elsewhere) the process of banning griefing alts would be termed "whack-a-mole". They get whacked, pop up again, get whacked, pop up again, get ............
This might be OK if there was some Linden function on duty 24/7 with a large mallet.

They do more than just check IPs. They use hardware profiling. Based on some configuration of your system (which they won't disclose for obvious reasons), they create a unique identity in the form of a hash.

Here's a blog post about it: http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/06/27/update-open-registration/#more-162

I never liked smushed food... smushed pork particularly, and I cant stand smushed avocados.

How did this get to be a food thread?

I am no very technical.... but hardware profiling? How does my Dell computer look different from the other one that is sold in the same line? I mean hardware is hardware? Or do I say something stupid now?

Morwen.

Lest there be any misunderstanding or upset, let me clarify:

I was of course talking about whacking bald moles, and NOT furry moles!
Delicious with smushrooms!

Dunno .. but it was a good move

Interesting to note the post about hardware profiling. AutoDesk have been doing this since the millennium. If you so much as change a hard drive, even using Norton Ghost or PQ Drive Image, the number will fail and you have to resubmit an authorisation request to .. er .. California as it happens!

AutoDesk are a pain in the b*m!

Your network card has a unique ID. (Nobody say "MAC" pls, or confusion will ensue
There can be other tags in your system.

For an example of the SL client software scanning your machine, log in to Sl and click Help / About. The SL client could get anything on your machine that the operating system does not hide from it.


It would be interesting to know if LL have used hardware profiling to block access - the circumstances and the frequency.

Every network interface card in the world has a unique address and is probably part of the PC's profile as seen by the viewer client software. But there are technical ways to cover that as well. Anything in the client can be changed without LL knowing.

Edit: Sling beat me to it!

Components are identifiable individually. I have music apps that do it for licensing reasons. When my hard drive died and I replaced it, I had to contact the companies to re-register some of them.

Another way around to discover (or help you to) alts is if you are streaming music on your land: just check the server logs for the IPs. You can't be sure at 100% but it helps.

Every PC has a unique profile of both hard and soft/ware. each is unique as a fingerprint.

If you go to Belarc.com, and run there free inspection, you will see a bunch of stuff, hard and soft/ware that have give your machine it's own individuality. For instance every motherboard has a serial number, and is given out. as do software and other things.

Now the owner is not necessarily I'D but the machine is.

Have LL ever said if they use hardware profiling or other clues to alt abuse to ban an actual user (not just an account). Am just wondering if they have shown they are aware of this issue (they must be surely?..)

Avatars' IP will be used as evidence if they do illegal things. I think LL would not ban Avatars' IP so they can still create alt account. An example, some ppl was sufing sl at a netbar with the same ip address. Did LL ban?

It's not too hard to look at IP address and hardware information to figure out that alt1 and alt2 were probably the same person. It's a lot harder to use that information to block that person's alt3. That's because the former is done by a person looking at information and using deductive reasoning, and the latter would require a computer to do inductive reasoning.

In short, just because you can figure out after-the-fact that alt1 and alt2 are the same person, doesn't mean that there is an easy way to prevent the person from coming back as alt3.

That's why there needs to be a way to meaningfully punish griefers. If they could just be blocked out once identified, then punishment wouldn't be so necessary. But since they can't be effectively blocked, they need to be dealt with in a way that makes them not want to come back.

Hardware profiling is a unique way of identifying a system, Microsoft have been doing it for years, change 'too' many components and XP requires re-registering. A problem I have encountered many times, when changing modems, GC, HD's etc when upgrading/changing my systems.

However, if you are a greifer who's intent is to rob people of their money, whether for fun, notoriety or actual monetary gain, maybe willing to 'alter' their hardware profile to continue their exploits.

It begs the question what happens if you buy a 2nd hand system from say ebay, or even maybe substantial components, are you in danger of being banned from SL by default?