Category: News-Opinion

Privacy: words and deeds

Posted on by Inara Pey

When talking to Dusan Writer recently, Rod Humble made a very interesting statement:

“Privacy is extremely important for anyone putting themselves out there, expressing themselves, or expressing a side of themselves through an avatar. People don’t want other people to connect the dots from their avatar to their real life person – or even, for that matter, to an alt. One of the ethical obligations we have is to protect people’s privacy

“People come to Second Life because they want a story, they want to be in a story….and we have an ethical obligation to protect that.

“I’m not so sure that the conventional wisdom makes any sense. Yes, it might be technically easy to track people and all that. But in the long-term I’m optimistic that we’ll see the pendulum swing back in the other direction towards more privacy.”

And granted, while it can be read at least two ways, LL Board member and investor Mitch Kapor appeared to see the light on matters of privacy when he tweeted:

“The more I learn, the more I see how the whole biz side of social networking is built on surreptitiously stealing personal data”

As regular readers here are only too aware, there has been much of a to-do about RedZone and its data-harvesting & drama/griefing capabilities (I simply cannot refer to it as an “anti-Copybotting tool” due to it being an abject failure in this regard). As has been seen, Linden Lab have made a move to partially close the door on things, although they’ve not – as yet, at least in this affair – gone far enough (and at this point it is only speculation as to whether they’ll go further in this particular matter).

However, the issue of user data – beyond what we volunteer to reveal in our Profiles  – being harvested is still an issue whether or not a single tool and HUD are on the market or not. Viewer patches will help, a clear-cut policy is needed – and users themselves need to be empowered to be able to make a clear-cut choice in matters of privacy.

Ann O’Toole has hit upon one way in which the latter can be achieved, and has raised a JIRA on the matter.

This is an elegant solution because it provides every single user in SL with a choice as to what happens “under the covers” with any data which is linked to them outside of Profile information. As such, it dovetails perfectly with Rod Humble’s stated views on privacy within and beyond Second Life – indeed it encourages the swing of the pendulum to which he alludes –  and curtails the act of surreptitiously stealing personal data which appears to have Mitch Kapor somewhat concerned about in his Tweet.

So – I urge you all very strongly to go visit SVC-6793 and add your weight to those voting / watching the issue – it really is in your best interests to do so.

Hamlet’s credibility takes a plunge

Posted on by Inara Pey

I’m going to have to start a RedZone category at this rate!

Hamlet Au over at New World Notes wades into the mess of the RedZone furore and – well, rather makes a mess of things.

Trying to play down the situation, Hamlet engages in the very worst kind of journalism imaginable, including:

  • Playing down the number of votes on the JIRA: “The JIRA thread has less than 1500 “votes” from Residents who consider the request valid and important…”
  • Quoting Samuel Linden from a “related” JIRA: “We do not consider IP gathering to be an actionable security exploit”
  • Overlooking the broader (and primary) issues around this tool – that of the potential for avatar / alt profiling, stalking, etc., while falling back on the hoary old “your IP Address is public” excuse: “Oh yeah, before you weigh in with your comments about Redzone’s IP address tracking software, keep in mind that if you post here, this Typepad blogging software lets me, well, track your IP address.”
  • Attempts to make light of the whole situation as being meaningless with a quip about a Second Life band, “And while we’re at it, how much of a concern is this for Redzone, the popular Second Life industrial band of the same name but no apparent relation to the program?”

Quite what prompts this display of “journalistic” arrogance is beyond me.

In referencing the JIRA and dismissing it as having “only” 1500 votes, Hamlet deliberately overlooks the fact that for much of the past month the SL General Discussion forum has been awash with complaints and concerns around RedZone and its potential for abuse, thus demonstrating that there is far wider concern than those who use and understand the JIRA.

Furthermore, it may “only” be 1500 votes – but that still puts it right up there among the top-ranking JIRA, and this does account for something, even with LL abandoning voting themselves – or is Hamlet stating user thoughts on any matters within SL aren’t worth a thing?

Then there is the quote from Samuel Linden. While it is genuine, the JIRA itself is over twelve months old and as such, Hamlet’s use of Samuel’s comment is really playing a game of misdirection here; particularly when any such comment has been overtaken by the changes made to Section 4 of the Community Standards – changes that Hamlet, as a journalist prepared to actually investigate the matter he is opining on should be fully aware of.

But just in case it has somehow slipped his attention, let me provide a handy quote aide-mémoire for him:

“4. Disclosure

“Residents are entitled to a reasonable level of privacy with regard to their Second Life experience. Sharing personal information about your fellow Residents without their consent — including gender, religion, age, marital status, race, sexual preference, alternate account names, and real-world location beyond what is provided by them in their Resident profile — is not allowed. Remotely monitoring conversations in Second Life, posting conversation logs, or sharing conversation logs without the participants’ consent are all prohibited.”

IF this were just a matter of IP Address gathering, there wouldn’t be a problem; again, those objecting to RedZone have made this abundantly clear. But RedZone does far more than this, as well all know. It seeks to match avatar account information with IP Addresses in an attempt to link alts.

In other words, in case you still don’t get it Hamlet, RedZone harvests alternative account names and attempts to correlate them to real-world location via the IP Address – and this is most expressly not allowed.

Of course, Hamlet isn’t going to see an issue with RedZone because he’s too caught up in the world of Facebook, where Mark Zuckerberg and his idiotic notion that “the age of privacy is over” rule. Indeed, he is utterly dismissive of the idea that any of us have a right to privacy, “Right now, I’m inclined to think it’s a deep concern mainly to a vociferous minority who are vigilantly protective over their privacy. And, of course, Copybot and alt account users.” Nice.

And by the way, Hamlet, I saw exactly what you did there – linking those who wish to maintain a degree of privacy around their SL activities directly with the nefarious acts of “Copybot users”. Nice to see NWN stoop into the worst kind of tabloid trickery.

However, I’ll leave it to Ordinal Malaprop to make the most astute and accurate summation as to the value and accuracy of Hamlet’s piece:

“I really don’t think that anybody who can’t tell the difference between the implications of a website being able to record self-identified (i.e. basically an/pseudonymous) IPs if people choose to submit comments, and those of a system that collects IPs without awareness let alone consent which are automatically tied to a unique identifier, should be writing articles like this.”

Indeed.

Slip-sliding away

Posted on by Inara Pey

Today, in theory, we should see something on policy relating to data mining in Second Life – or at least what amounts to being “private” data & how it can be used.

As reported last night, LL has changed the wording of the Section 4 of the Community Standards – but frankly, this is not enough.

zFire Xue himself is busily informing his followers that he is working on ways to – essentially – render the new CS null and void. While we do not know what, if any, conversations have been held between Mr. Xue and Linden Lab, it is clear from some of the posts on his own forum that he fails to grasp the precedent of formal consent over implied consent – in much the same way that those with statement in their Profiles relating to their ability to freely disseminate IM conversations fail to grasp this fundamental point. An example of this failure to comprehend comes in his statement that if people do not respond to a request for consent to be “background checked” then they “have given their consent” and the check will be enabled.

This is akin to saying that a vandal is entitled to kick the glass out of someone’s front door because they failed to answer it within 60 seconds of the bell being rung. The vandal may think it is OK – but the authorities are liable to inform him otherwise.

Elsewhere, Xue mob rail against the upcoming media patch that has been accepted into Phoenix, resulting in some vile and outright threatening posts being made – so much so that Jessica Lyons herself was prompted to step into the fray, thus:

“I guess it’s time to make a formal post here. While I may control the official position of the Phoenix Viewer Project on matters such as this, I do not control and would make no attempt to control the opinions of the members on this team. That is to say, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and EVERYONE has an opinion… Internally.. we have team members in favor of Rz, and team members against it… Those opinions do NOT reflect the official position of the Project as a whole.

“The official position of the Phoenix Viewer Project in regards to the Redzone matter, is neutral.. The project is not in favor of.. nor against Rz. There are valid arguments on both sides of this fence and we will not take sides.

“However, we as a team have discussed at great lengths and agreed that users should have the right to control what connections their viewer or computer make to the internet. Because of this, we have accepted and are currently improving a patch that was submitted to us which provides the user a partial url string to which they can allow or deny a connection.

“When a user enters a parcel that has a media url, and they have media enabled and the “Media Filter” option enabled, it will prompt the user before allowing the connection and say “The owner of this parcel has requested media at the following location to be loaded by your viewer”… The URL will be parsed beyond the domain, example… “http://sim4328.agni.lindenlab.com:……/…. php?…. /…. “

“We feel this implementation provides acceptable privacy for both the visitors and the stream owners by not giving out the full URL. The visitor can then choose to Allow, Deny, Black list, White list. This feature can be enabled or disabled completely by the user in media preferences. The black list and white list will be shipped empty.

“Now, while Redzone users may feel this feature is targeting Redzone.. and no amount of statement by me may change that opinion to which you are all entitled too.. I will again state the purpose of this feature for the record. “To provide the user the ‘Right’ to control what connections their viewer makes to the internet.” This is of course no different than the purpose of any firewall.”

[with thanks to Hitomi Tipomi]

And she is absolutely correct. The risks in leaving the Viewer in its “default” mode are legion when it comes to potential abuse through the media stream. As such, providing the user who opts to have media turned on with a media to review and accept incoming media streams is not “helping the copybotters and griefers” – not in the slightest. It is about protecting SL users and their computers. Period.

Henri Beauchamp also understands this, releasing as he does today an update to his Cool VL Viewer:

“Cool VL Viewer v1.25.0.23 (stable branch, Snowglobe v1.5-based)

“New in this release:

  • New MediaFilter patch: based on a patch by Sione Lomu, this (largely) reworked patch allows you to authorize or deny individual media and audio streams. See this message for full details.
  • Updated SLPluginAndMediaFixes patch: this new version fixes the internal web browser “cache” folder quirk which caused the latter to be written at the root of your filesystem (“/cache” in Linux, “c:\cache” in Windows). See this thread for details.
  • Updated ContextMenuTextEntry patch: this new version improves the context menu of input lines and text entries by greying out automatically unavailable actions in the menu (for example, disabling “Copy” when no text is selected).
  • Updated RevertUIchanges patch: changed to cope with the new MediaFilter patch.
  • Updated CoolPreferences patch: changed to implement the options related to the MediaFilter patch (in the “Miscellaneous” sub-tab of the “Cool features” tab: new checkbox and “Reset filters” button).
  • Updated CoolVLViewerBranding patch: Sione Lomu added to the contributors list.

“Enjoy ! “

[with thanks to Innula Zenovka for raising this.]

Doubtless, this will also make Henri a “supporter of griffers” (or “Greenzoners” as the term now appears to be).  All I can say is: kudos for him in giving his users the freedom of choice. I look forward to seeing more 1.x TPVs making the patch available and – hopefully – the coding being ported to 2.x TPVs.

Personally, I have media disabled on my computer – and I’ll continue to do so moving forward (although I might give the patch a try once it is available in a Phoenix release). Of course, admitting this doubtless confirms to Mr. Xue and his Crackerjack followers that I’m a “copybotter and griefer” (or indeed “griffer”, as they insist on spelling it).

The fact that I have media disabled because a) I simply do not and almost never have watch a video stream in-world (other than just after my return to SL), and therefore never have had media streaming turned on; and b) I actually prefer having my own music playing over the stereo while in-world, as 98% of “music” played in stores usually gives me a dose of the screaming heebee geebees; is something that Xue et al will not accept as being my right.

But then, it is more fitting for these people to adopt the mob mentality and loudly proclaim that anyone with media turned off does so “because they have something to hide”, because the right of the user to make a choice in what they do and how they go about their Second Life is precisely what Xue and his Crackerjack crowd want to try and prevent. Not because it means that those using RedZone will no longer be able to “protect” their stores and business (RedZone is already an abject failure in this regard, so ’nuff said). No. The reason that Xue’s Crackerjack followers don’t like the idea of you and I exercising our right of choice as to what goes on in relation to our in-world experience is because it ruins their immature sense of entitlement that they have the right to “police” the Grid and determine who is who and who can go where.

And this remains the core issue with this tool in particular – as zFire’s continued talk of circumventing the revised Community Standards most ably demonstrates – the ability of a minority to attempt to hold sway over the majority and consider themselves somehow above the ToS and CS.

However, there is an old truism about hanging and giving someone sufficient rope. Given the noises being made within LL as regards privacy – from the likes of Rod Humble and Mitch Kapor (who recently tweeted “The more I learn, the more I see how the whole biz side of social networking is built on surreptitiously stealing personal data” – I’m hoping that the truism applies in the case of Mr. Xue and his self-supposed immunity from the revised CS.

Addendum Feb 26th

It would seem that zFire Xue is determined to hang himself. With speculation continuing to run as to the future of RedZone and the potential for it to be banned from SL, he responds with pure (and exceptionally stupid) thug-like threats.

Note the highlighted portion. The thuggish attitude here is clear: he’s threatening to “out” the data he’s gathered; he’s trying to bully Linden Lab and he’s attempting to stifle legitimate concerns about his product (although this last point, to be fair, has always been his tactic and so comes under the “nothing new here” category).

Perhaps he actually realised he was giving away too much as to his intentions, as this reply was later re-edited into something far milder and with the threats removed – and can be seen on his forum in this latter format:

Sadly for xFire, however, the original reply – and his intentions – are now a matter of public record, thanks to Innula Zenovka, who captured the original in a screen shot prior to posting it over at SLU, – and to others who have since circulated it for broader consideration up to and including posting a copy on the JIRA related to this issue.

What was I saying earlier about the old hanging, rope, and man truism? zFire, meet rope.

 

Nailing the data harvesters (2): LL make a move

Posted on by Inara Pey

It seems LL have made a move to clamp down on tools like RedZone.

Until today, Section 4 of the Community Standards read:

“Residents are entitled to a reasonable level of privacy with regard to their Second Life experience. Sharing personal information about a fellow Resident –including gender, religion, age, marital status, race, sexual preference, and real-world location beyond what is provided by the Resident in the First Life page of their Resident profile is a violation of that Resident’s privacy. Remotely monitoring conversations, posting conversation logs, or sharing conversation logs without consent are all prohibited in Second Life and on the Second Life Forums.”

However, this has now been revised to read:

“Residents are entitled to a reasonable level of privacy with regard to their Second Life experience. Sharing personal information about your fellow Residents without their consent — including gender, religion, age, marital status, race, sexual preference, alternate account names, and real-world location beyond what is provided by them in their Resident profile — is not allowed. Remotely monitoring conversations in Second Life, posting conversation logs, or sharing conversation logs without the participants’ consent are all prohibited.”

[my emphasis]

Thus, at a stroke, the surreptitious ability of RedZone to gather information on SL users without their knowledge, much less consent is rendered void – or is it?

It’s not quite time to proclaim victory as yet. While the change to Section 4 of the CS is indeed welcome, it does not go far enough: sharing information that can be regarded as personal may not “not be allowed” – what about gathering of said information?

There is also the matter of in-store scanners (note that on his own blog zFire only comments on his nasty little (and purely voyeuristic) HUD as being updated to request people allow it to scan them).

The playing field has shifted, certainly – but, depending on what policy announcement is forthcoming from LL tomorrow – it seems that it may not have shifted enough.

Right now, the rule of thumb would be to keep your media tools disabled – at least for the time being.

ADDENDUM – Feb 25th

Thanks to Theia Magic’s investigations, it now appears that the RedZone in-world scanners give you a link to follow to the RedZone website in order to “give your consent” to be “background checked”.

This being the case, I’d advise people to keep media disabled and to stay away from the RedZone website – especially if following links using your own web browser,  rather than the built-in Viewer browser. Visiting that website is giving a clear indication that you’re OK with data being captured and – potentially – a cookie being deposited on your computer – even if you’re attempting to “opt out” of your information being captured!

The website is further confusing inasmuch as only those already scanned need to “opt out”. Despite the claims of zFire Xue, RedZone’s creator, those scanned / placed on the database are liable to be in the minority – therefore this approach could fool people into exposing themselves where there is no need for them to do so.

Beyond this, the solutions currently being offered up by zFire Xue relate purely to having your details (if any) “checked” on his database – they do nothing to prevent any actual scanning by his in-world items in the first place.

So – simplest solution: keep your media options disabled and remember there are a lot more stores you can shop at / clubs you can dance at that don’t use RedZone than there are stores that do use it.

“Great company, but….”

Posted on by Inara Pey

We’ve all had our views on Linden Lab. Some have been favourable, some haven’t. Some have blamed specific people, some have blamed the culture. Most have felt the company was suffering bumhand syndrome (that’s where you can find your bum with one hand but never with the other).

But… have you ever wondered what Linden employees, past and present, felt about the company? Well – here’s your chance.

(With thanks to Daniel Voyager for raising awareness.)

RedZone HUD users don’t like being called out

Posted on by Inara Pey

I’ve already referred to a recent thread (still available as read-only) dealing with more on the subject of RedZone.

In this thread, the OP became rather abusive towards those putting up valid arguments against RedZone, culminating in the following post:

“Nooo Ann.. what i’m sayiing, is IF you haved a legitmate gripe, is there are ways that LL can help You solve your problem. i invcluded the inks to help You.

“What i’m saying is this. Yes.. we desrerve  a way to protect ourselsve. this is a prime example.

“LL offers many ways to deter this behavior.

“if ALL else fails. yes.. get redzone,, wear the HUd.. and feel safe once again.”

(page 6, forum page view).

Now, given the RedZone HUD is a tool that allowed the wearer to surreptitiously sim-hop and gather data on other avatars therein, I couldn’t help but respond with a cheeky:

“if ALL else fails. yes.. get redzone,, wear the HUd.. and violate the ToS by travelling from sim-to-sim, gathering data on others without their consent

FIFY!”

And guess what? Someone abuse reported me!

It seems that despite the 18+ language employed by both the OP and other in the thread (remembering that forums are supposed to be PG/G in both subject and content, and can be read by under-18s)…my little comment was the one that was reported to the moderators – and subsequently removed!

Now, I don’t for a minute believe the OP herself went to this much trouble – but it would seem that someone, somewhere has a major insecurity complex when it comes to having the nasty little tool they use / their dirty raincoat-like voyeurism being (again) outed.

Sadly, no express reason for the removal of the comment has been given by Linden Lab. I’m guessing the comment was hung on a technicality surrounding “violate the ToS”. Even so – that people are prepared to go this far in an attempt to whitewash this product and its uses again causes me to ask this question of all genuine store owners in Second Life:

Do you really want your store, your products, your reputation identified with the kind of people who engage in this kind of activity, and who go to the greatest of lengths to try and hide their immature, voyeuristic needs? Is using a tool that cannot provide you with anything other than a wrinkled comfort blanket, and which is coveted by the kind of idiocy routinely seen on the creator’s own forums really the way to promote your hard work?