The last few days have seen some mysterious goings-on around RedZone.
- A video emerged that purportedly showed someone closely associated with RedZone taking to his girl friend / another user and boasting about how he was attempting to scam the user names and passwords of RedZone users to see if they could be used to access SL accounts
- This video was posted on YouTube some seven months ago, but was only pointed to (apparently anonymously) this week
- The video was linked to a number of other videos that appear to have come from the creator of RedZone and a group of friends – channels subscribing to them included “Insanity Productions”, the “company” behind RedZone
- Attempts to track the links between videos, etc., were countered by attempts to hide them / take them down from YouTube – almost as if someone were attempting to cover their tracks
- Denials and counter-claims were put out by the “RedZone Camp”, citing, among other things, that YouTube and Google themselves had been hacked, that the video was a fake, and that the timestamp on it had been altered
- zFire Xue then threw down a public challenge for someone to attempt to hack his computer.
Guess what?
It appears someone did. Some of us were on the epic SLU thread when his system went down – keeping us going for hours in speculation. Today, all became clear when the Alphaville Herald published a confirmation. And it appears some 1.6 million individual IP addresses are held in the database, complete with geolocation tools for pinning them down – pretty much as claimed in the video that surfaced earlier in the week.
And it appears that his activities are not limited to RedZone users; screen shots hint that he may well have been acting against users of his Prim Animation tool as well.
Already the news is spreading – and it is hard to see how “zFire” and his cohorts can wriggle free of this.
The evidence might be faked – but if so, it is rather elaborate, and one might suggest Occam’s Razor be applied to any explanations that try to explain this leak away via convoluted logic.
Certainly, this would not suggest that Linden Lab may well need to take a closer look at precisely what is going on around data harvesting, as information such as this going into the public domain is not going to do the reputation of Second Life – of Linden Lab – a lot of good.
Back when I first commented on RedZone, I asked the users of that system a question:
I’d also like to address any potential user of RedZone on the matter of the tool they are using: if RedZone’s creators are collating information on SL users based on a scripted device you are deploying on your land – how much more information might they be gathering on you each and every time you log into their website?
Well, it looks like we all have the answer.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 
Yes, this is disturbing indeed and raises all sorts of issues, LL need to go on a security awareness campaign.
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At the very least…
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LL needs to remove all systems related to Ban Links due to the fact they they do not just collect information on residents, but they are used to defame residents and groups without actual evidence.
CDS & Skills Hak Data Mine residents, and store information as well without the consent of all users, even with the new Media Filter in place his system has brought harm to many residents who will never enjoy SL Again because of his wild accusations. He himself has been part of the Emerald Team working right along side Copybotters who also helped develop his system aka JCool, Ph0x, which was partner to Liana Pera, and then had connections to the Military Merczateers, and the CADUSC, and other groups which also had a couple of Copybotters in those, and those connections go on.
The fact is that Zfire had this coming, and I am glad he is gone for the sake of the community of SL, I hope that Skills Hak’s Systems and all other systems doing such are required to be gone from SL as well.
If users want to ban a resident from there land there is a Land Ban List and many Security Jobs open for that Reason in SL, so Use Them, and Educate our community against theft together we stand as one, and will over come the theft, but not using illegal privacy violating methods.
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