[sldev] Re: Texture bugs.

Mathew Frank mathew at lifeart.net.au
Wed Jan 24 01:02:08 PST 2007


Jason Giglio wrote:
> Mark Wagner wrote:
>> Once you know the relation between an IP address and a name, there are
>> all sorts of nasty things you can do.  See, for example, the history
>> of IRC warfare.
>>
>
> Even so, most IRC networks still don't cloak by default.  Everyone in 
> #secondlife is exposing their IP and nick!  I bet they didn't even 
> think twice about it.  It really isn't a big deal.
>
> Knowing that Gigs Taggart is 65.102.117.23 is a big jump from knowing 
> that Jason Giglio is that IP.  Dynamic IPs make even that information 
> not very reliable.
>
> I still think a global opt-in/opt-out would be plenty.  Just like the 
> client asks you if you want to enable parcel streaming media (once), 
> it could ask you once if you want to enable dynamic textures.  Later 
> on, you could change that option in the preferences.
>
> That way people who want full anonymity get it without punishing 
> people who aren't paranoid by annoying them with dialog boxes every 
> time they attach a HUD.  Win-win.

I do think the web browsers approach to popups is better though.  ie a 
dialogbox that can be answered "never ask me again" and a flashy icon in 
the menu bar that tells you when a texture has just been denied.    That 
way at least people know when they are missing out on something.  a case 
by case exception list comes to mind, too (ie block unless on this list)

People are very familiar with the web browser approach for cookies.

Though I do think there are more effective ways of tracking somebody 
down - Google for example will let me track most people to a city by 
looking for IP addresses just with it alone - at least the paranoid 
people will not totally up and leave due to their security perception.  
I used that recently in tracking down some details of a person invovled 
in industrial espionage (info theft in this case from a company)

Cheer,
Mathew


More information about the SLDev mailing list