[sldev] Re: "But your IP wouldn't be safe"

[Able Whitman]

On 7/10/07, Chance Unknown <chance at kalacia.com> wrote:
>
> since your target is SL, the people most argumentitive about privacy
> concerns are the bored lonely housewives that sit at home looking for cyber
> affairs. of course they want their identities masked. they dont get that
> kind of privay when looking for a hookup at myspace or facebook.
>

This is a straw man argument, and your conclusion is as presumptuous as it
is wrong.  There are many reasons someone might want to protect their RL
identity. Some of these Argent has already mentioned. SL is also a place
where people gather together to discuss politics, or religion, or health, or
any number of topics where they may not want their RL identity disclosed.
Some people come to SL precisely because they can have a forum to discuss
things freely without fear of retribution, where it be from a government, a
workplace, a family member, a friend, or even from a stranger.

Even if there are no such principled endeavors involved, each user should be
able to decide for him or herself whether such identifiable information is
revealed. Nobody else should be able to make this decision for them (save,
of course, for LL in the case of legal exigencies, through due process).

are there any demographics that places these particular consumers in the
> primary seat driving development? it has been demonstrated over the past
> number of years that the paying customers (private islands) dont tend to
> have influence over development, so why should an even smaller cluster of
> customers be the ones responsible for driving design goals?
>

Privacy is a concern of essentially all users, even if they aren't
explicitly aware of it. In fact, personal information should be protected by
default because most people don't think about it. Just because people aren't
clamoring for their information to be protected doesn't mean that it should
be shared freely and without their consent.

There is no immutable requirement that the SL viewer act in a way to help
protect users' personal information, but it should do so anyway. Again, I am
not arguing steadfastly against any features which would, by their nature,
necessitate disclosure of such information. My position is simply that in
cases where users' private information could be disclosed, that the
disclosure be disabled by default, that the user be informed and asked for
consent, and that such consent be revocable.

On 7/10/07, dale at daleglass.net <dale at daleglass.net> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Jul 10, 2007 at 03:08:44AM +0200, Nicholaz Beresford wrote:
> > > Ummm, I'm probably missing the point of this discussion completely,
> > > but what exactly do you think is this attacker doing with your
> > > your IP address?
> > DoS, for instance
> >
> > > I mean what is he doing different from that
> > > which about 20+ people per hour aren't trying already through
> > > IP scan.
> > That on SL you can connect it to a name (even avatar name), and a random
> > IP scan doesn't.
> >
> > Think IRC -- Doing something nasty to another person's computer is
> > pretty common there, and people don't pick targets at random.
> >
> > If Bob is on IRC, and Mallory hates him for some reason, and the IRC
> > server makes the IP addresses visible, then Mallory has all the required
> > data to attack Bob specifically.
> >
> > Now, DoS is illegal of course, but it doesn't mean it won't happen, and
> > it's a fuzzy concept as well. You can perform a DoS without making it
> > really obvious it's an attack.
> >
> > For instance, there are plenty people with very low upload speeds. If
> > you
> > find this person runs a webserver or some other service that it's
> > possible to download lots of data from, you don't even need to do
> > anything particularly malicious.
> >
> > Just connect to the server, with maybe just 1-3 connections (to avoid
> > looking obviously evil), and start downloading. On many connections
> > that'll cause plenty lag.
> >
> > They can take the server down, but if you managed that, that's a DoS
> > in itself.
> >
> >
> > IMO, in SL this is even more likely. On IRC it's just name, on SL there
> > are multiple well known groups targeted by various morons, who are
> > identifiable by the way they look.
> >
> > And since there even are people trying to bring the grid down, despite
> > LL's attempt at prosecution, I doubt legal threats are enough to
> > dissuade everybody.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Click here to unsubscribe or manage your list subscription:
> > /index.html
> >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Click here to unsubscribe or manage your list subscription:
> /index.html
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.secondlife.com/pipermail/sldev/attachments/20070710/b276b235/attachment-0001.htm