[sldev] Linden Lab Navigations and Landmark Project

[Argent Stonecutter]

On 2008-04-19, at 15:16, Jason Giglio wrote:
> Really getting sick of this bullshit.  The world isn't going to stop
> because you have this false belief that an IP address is private
> information.

I'm getting tired of explaining this, too, but I'll give it another try.

Lets' start with the Internet.

On the Internet, when you visit a website, that website gets your IP  
address. You visit another website. That site gets your IP address.  
So website A knows that "Joe user" is at IP address A, and website B  
knows that "Fred smith" is at IP address A.

But this doesn't tell website B that "Joe user" is "Fred smith",  
because Website B doesn't see that.

At one time it was possible for Website b to use tricks with cookies  
to get information that Website A had put on the user's computer and  
figure out that "Joe user" is "Fred smith". This kind of thing is  
frowned upon, and browsers have over the years been tightened up to  
try and reduce the opportunities for this kind of information leakage.

There are, however, still tricks that website B can use. For example,  
he could set up Website C and have Website C take out an ad on  
Website A, and use the referrer for the image to get information  
about the IP addresses that visit Website A.

This practice of using "web bugs" to track people across websites is  
controversial. Many people don't like it. There are programs you can  
get to try and block it. When people come up with new kinds of web  
bugs, they show up on security mailing lists, because being able to  
track people from website to website is something that is considered  
a bad thing.

Website hosting companies make an effort so that people who visit  
myfreeserver/cutepuppies don't reveal to the owner of cutepuppies  
that they also visit mysfreeserver/weirdsexkink. Where they don't,  
that also shows up in security lists.

It's mostly a minor problem on the internet as a whole because  
there's no common shared "global cookie" that everyone can use to  
track you.

Within Second Life, your account name serves as that kind of global  
cookie. Making the IP address available as well provides what is  
basically a "universal web bug" that, if it existed in the 2d  
Internet, would be big news.

If Linden Labs wants to make SL a "3d Internet", they would be poorly  
advised to make a "universal web bug" a standard part of the system.