[sldev] Re: Texture bugs

Argent Stonecutter secret.argent at gmail.com
Tue Jan 23 13:29:39 PST 2007


On Jan 22, 2007, at 11:47 PM, Mathew Frank wrote:
> It is an interesting thought, though I am of differing view regarding
> the usefulness of it to stalking.

Currently the only really effective way to get away from dedicated  
"fans" is by using alts. Popular content creators I've spoken to talk  
about using multiple alts, one after the other, as they get figured  
out and people start pestering them. Being able to track people by IP  
address would make this kind of anonymity impossible. Also, this  
could be used to match up avatars with real identities using regular  
web bugs combined with texture bugs. This is a potentially huge  
issue, and it can't really be fixed by end-users... this is why  
browsers are increasingly defaulting to rejecting third-party  
cookies, and why email clients can be (and should be) configured not  
to display remote images, and one of the reasons people block banners.

BTW: Your idea for changing the texture based on the results of  
sensor scans is RATHER clever.

http://example.com/webbug.jpg?Argent%20Stonecutter=12345-etc&Mathew% 
20Frank=FEEDFACE-etc...

This would have the additional advantage (or disadvantage) of  
preventing caching on the client from keeping the bug from loading.

> If it is a big problem then a way around it I guess would be to proxy
> things around other SL clients or something - a bit like TOR.   Or  
> just
> allow users to run proxys themselves - they would be able to given  
> that
> this would be standard HTTP traffic.

This wouldn't help, unless the proxy was changed for each alt. And  
it's really too much to expect the user to do.




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