Spyware...ToS and Legal Violation in secondlife and why you should be concerned

Warning:This post is filled with sloppy writing thats only meant to get a point a across, Dry legal issues, reference to ToS and Legal violations and attempts to prove something and probably is redundant in proving the point made. Beware, poor grammar ahead.

It has come to My attention that security issues with media in secondlife have become a serious problem and many users downplay these security issues. In this Post I'm going to write about mostly a tool that commits these security exploits, issues regarding it, It's creator, It's Legality, and I'm also going to write about other things that can be done with this mentioned exploit, many of the cases outside the discussion of the tool are undocumented but potential threats to secondlife and it's users.

I Discovered a while back on XstreetSL.com a security orb tool that claims to ban copybotters, and their alts? Well now how do they do this? Are they getting my information? Pulling it From my PC? Are they Invading my Privacy? Is this legal? Many people are familiar with such a tool, and when I discuss it they often mention a tool I have yet to look into titled CDS, the tool I am mentioning is Called zf redzone, and is published by a zfire xue. To answer the above questions: It utilizes Secondlife Media functions to obtain IP addresses on avatars, and compare them searching for avatars with the matching IP address. Their Getting information on you such as alternate accounts, there are rumors that this tool scans your hard drive to locate info on you, but really that's likely an exaggeration of its functionality. The information is not pulled from your PC, it's gained from the nearest routing point they can get to which is your home router, so when they do identify your alts, oftentimes others you share residence with will be included. Yes they are invading your privacy as they are collecting Information about you without your knowledge or consent. It's Illegal by secondlife Terms of service and By Law, Secondlife Terms of service Section 8.3 Specifically disallows the use of spyware, and the Tool violates the California privacy Protection act a law designed to protect any systems within California, Linden Labs being a california based company and the spyware residing on their servers, means that all secondlife residents are Protected under the california Privacy protect act, specifically BPC22575-22579 protects you and linden labs servers. Also to top it all off you and your alt, or roommate may not visit the same locations in secondlife? Guess what? It's a distributed system that utilizes web functions to log this information so your alts may be identified even if never crossing the same point, so long as they are both scanned by the zf redzone system. Is this system 120% accurate as the author claims? No It is not. As it works based on IP and can identify roommates, or people you login to assist as alt's, also if you log in from college or a dormitory connection, to zf redzone it may look like you have hundreads of alts. Which brings upon another function of this tool, client detection. If it detects a copybot. It bans the user, and their alts. Is It's copybot protection 100% accurate? NO! Any copybot with media off can evade it and any snowglobe 2.0 user appears to be copybot to this system. Anyhow snowglobe users are probably reading this and wondering why hasent this thing banned me for snowglobe use. If you are. Do your research on the viewer your using! Anyone that knows much of anything about alternate secondlife viewers and snowglobe should know snowglobe has 2 major distributions which are Snowglobe 1.3(based on secondlife 1.23) and Snowglobe 2.0(based on secondlife 2.0) both viewers being inherently different their only the same in name as they both come from different codebases, so when zf redzone detects snowglobe, it is detecting the use of snowglobe 1.3. Please see this link regarding a user who contacted zfire xue about this nasty issue, and the ignorant response he was given: http://www.mail-archive.com/opensource-dev@lists.secondlife.com/msg02048.html Obviously the creator does not acknowledge his system has a flaw and thus then will do nothing to fix it.

Now Onto the point why it upsets me, upon viewing this spyware for sale on xstreet I contacted the seller, what I suspect is an alternate account known as TheBoris Gothly. And inquired about what it did, the inquiry lead me to find the user has no consideration for the privacy of others or potential misuse of the system. Upon interviewing the user he quoted the privacy Policy of Linden Labs and convenienintly neglected the parts that did not fit his misuse of the service he quoted:
some services operated by Second Life users may provide content that is accessed through and located on third party (non-Linden Lab) servers that may log IP addresses.

however he conveniently left out the previous part that sites this is only an example of users are capable of that immediately states beforehand:

For instance,

and he also conveniently left out the purpose of that part of the privacy Policy:

Certain account information is displayed to other users in your Second Life profile, and may be available through automated script calls and application program interfaces. This information includes your account name, account type, the date your account was established, whether or not you are currently online, user rating information, group and partner information, and whether or not you have established a payment account or transaction history with Linden Lab. Further, you agree and understand that Linden Lab does not control and is not responsible for information, privacy or security practices concerning data that you provide to, or that may otherwise be collected by, Second Life users other than Linden Lab.

want to see the privacy Policy that's quoted here in whole? View it here:
http://secondlife.com/corporate/privacy.php (7/14/2010)

with that stated the privacy policy in whole means Linden Labs shall in no way be held responsible for information that you include within your profile and shall not be held responsible for data mining schemes of other users like this one we provide an example of so if you get someone hiding behind the privacy policy, and the user quotes the example scenario only in part to hide the fact that what their doing is not condoned by Linden Labs and to make it sound like their on terms with the privacy policy, so what TheBoris Gothly quoted, has its meaning reversed by all the parts he so conveniently left out. Misrepresenting the Privacy Policy? I think that's enough for banishment from the secondlife system against both zfire xue and TheBoris Gothly right there, but as you expected. Theres more.

The secondlife terms of service specifically disallows this type of activity under the section 8.3 regardless of Privacy Policy which can be viewed here: http://secondlife.com/corporate/tos.php

8.3 You agree that you will not post or transmit Content or code that may be harmful, impede other users' functionality, invade other users' privacy, or surreptitiously or negatively impact any system or network.
You agree to respect both the integrity of the Service and the privacy of other users. You will not:

(i) Post or transmit viruses, Trojan horses, worms, spyware, time bombs, cancelbots, or other computer programming routines that may harm the Service or interests or rights of other users, or that may harvest or collect any data or personal information about other users without their consent;

(iv) Engage in malicious or disruptive conduct that impedes or interferes with other users' normal use of the Service;

with that said, It is clear, Spyware is against the secondlife Terms of service, also your probably wondering why section iv is included in the quote? It's because this tool disrupts service for snowglobe 2.0 users and if you read the xstreet page that sells this object at: https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=1175807 it becomes clear this tool is designed to cause a crash in the secondlife client quoted from the page: Ejects and TP home intruders automatically often crashing them, if your online or not, group owned land or your own! so this tool further violates the ToS because it is designed to crash a viewer by running the eject function which teleports users to the nearest place off your parcel and the teleport home function which does at it says at the same time against a targeted user.

Also another point I should make with this on the zf redzone site found at http://isellsl.ath.cx/redzone.php there are various statistics posted where as ToS 8.3 states at the end Any violation by you of the terms of this Section may result in immediate suspension or termination of your Accounts without any refund or other compensation. you can see just how many times the zf redzone system has violated ToS 8.3 under the section Linked IP's which is a count of how many groups of accounts its made to a target IP address, simply put you can violate ToS section 8.3 a single time and be banished from secondlife. This user has made a tool that has done it many thousands of times. I'm just waiting for the ban to happen.

Not to forget, further proof of previously made claim, that this tool is illegal and violates the law. People being scanned by this system receive no notice their being scanned and are not asked for consent which ToS 8.3 clearly states you must have but secondlife ToS is beside the point now. This Tool is illegal. The Legal Code BPC22575-22579 Prohibits this and you can view it here: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=bpc&group=22001-23000&file=22575-22579 zf redzone commits these violations of this law. The law requires that you present the user with a privacy Policy before gathering information on the user, and specifically protects any information that may be used to contact a person In Person or Online, your username is protected under this law.

(6) Any other identifier that permits the physical or online contacting of a specific individual.

This law also as said before states there must be a privacy policy presented to the user information is being collected on, its setup in the zfire xues store in the sim vsevolod I've passed the security system numerous times and received no such notice it was trying to collect information on me or of its privacy Policy. From the law it is stated:

22575. (a) An operator of a commercial Web site or online service
that collects personally identifiable information through the
Internet about individual consumers residing in California who use or
visit its commercial Web site or online service shall conspicuously
post its privacy policy on its Web site, or in the case of an
operator of an online service, make that policy available in
accordance with paragraph (5) of subdivision (b) of Section 22577. An
operator shall be in violation of this subdivision only if the
operator fails to post its policy within 30 days after being notified
of noncompliance.

if you viewed the previous link to the zf redzone and viewed the item discussion on xstreet the above 30 day notice has already been clearly delivered by a number of users who state this is a privacy violation and you will further see this references another section of the law:

EDIT:(the user posts have been deleted leaving gaps in the item discussion read about it here: http://treminarisecondlife.blogspot.com/2010/07/item-discussion-for-zf-redzone-censored.html I think this puts zf Redzones author and salesperson in knowledgeable and willful violation of BPC22575-22579 as they have covered up the posts pointing out that this is a privacy violation)

(b) The term "conspicuously post" with respect to a privacy policy
shall include posting the privacy policy through any of the
following:
(1) A Web page on which the actual privacy policy is posted if the
Web page is the homepage or first significant page after entering
the Web site.
(2) An icon that hyperlinks to a Web page on which the actual
privacy policy is posted, if the icon is located on the homepage or
the first significant page after entering the Web site, and if the
icon contains the word "privacy." The icon shall also use a color
that contrasts with the background color of the Web page or is
otherwise distinguishable.
(3) A text link that hyperlinks to a Web page on which the actual
privacy policy is posted, if the text link is located on the homepage
or first significant page after entering the Web site, and if the
text link does one of the following:
(A) Includes the word "privacy."
(B) Is written in capital letters equal to or greater in size than
the surrounding text.
(C) Is written in larger type than the surrounding text, or in
contrasting type, font, or color to the surrounding text of the same
size, or set off from the surrounding text of the same size by
symbols or other marks that call attention to the language.
(4) Any other functional hyperlink that is so displayed that a
reasonable person would notice it.
(5) In the case of an online service, any other reasonably
accessible means of making the privacy policy available for consumers
of the online service.

given this specific part of the law the operator zfire xue, obviously cannot carry out Option 1 to give notice to users, Option 2, they must make an object visible in world that can be clicked to view the privacy policy that is noticable in world, option 3 zfire xue must make his tool message the user that is about to be scanned for alts that there is a privacy policy regarding this and the must visit a specific URL in order to view this policy. 4 pretty much covers 3 but declares hyperlinks in services that may not be able to display text links and 5 states very openly that there must be a reasonable means that you can view the privacy policy before this information is collected, and as with any terms of service or privacy policy you need to verify the user was capable of viewing the privacy policy, so at the very least, zfire xue, needs to make this tool popup a dialogue box, with an OK button on it that must be clicked before any information is collected on you. Does zf redzone do any of this? No it does not. I've passed it by several times, its being sold in the sim vsevolod and there is one setup on top of his store location which does nothing to notify me information is being collected on me. So thus hence zf redzone violates this law which is part of the california privacy protection act. Not a California resident and reading this? And wondering how your protected under this law being a California state law? See the above link to the secondlife terms of service section 12.2. it states:(7/14/2010)

You agree that this Agreement and the relationship between you and Linden Lab shall be governed by the laws of the State of California without regard to conflict of law principles or the United Nations Convention on the International Sale of Goods. Further, you and Linden Lab agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the courts located in the City and County of San Francisco, California, except as provided in Section 12.1 regarding optional arbitration. Notwithstanding this, either party shall still be allowed to apply for injunctive or other equitable relief to protect or enforce that party's Intellectual Property Rights in any court of competent jurisdiction where the other party resides or has its principal place of business.

repeated:You agree that this Agreement and the relationship between you and Linden Lab shall be governed by the laws of the State of California

simply put you must follow California state law at all times and with all actions within the secondlife service((in addition to your local laws of course)) thus hence all secondlife users are protected under BPC22575-22579 in regards to events occurring related to the secondlife service. But theres more...

and finally zf redzone further violates the law BPC22575-22579 by having a deceptive privacy Policy BPC22575-22579 states:

22576. An operator of a commercial Web site or online service that
collects personally identifiable information through the Web site or
online service from individual consumers who use or visit the
commercial Web site or online service and who reside in California
shall be in violation of this section if the operator fails to comply
with the provisions of Section 22575 or with the provisions of its
posted privacy policy in either of the following ways:
(a) Knowingly and willfully.
(b) Negligently and materially.

and:

(1) Identify the categories of personally identifiable information
that the operator collects through the Web site or online service
about individual consumers who use or visit its commercial Web site
or online service and the categories of third-party persons or
entities with whom the operator may share that personally
identifiable information.
(2) If the operator maintains a process for an individual consumer
who uses or visits its commercial Web site or online service to
review and request changes to any of his or her personally
identifiable information that is collected through the Web site or
online service, provide a description of that process.
(3) Describe the process by which the operator notifies consumers
who use or visit its commercial Web site or online service of
material changes to the operator's privacy policy for that Web site
or online service.
(4) Identify its effective date.

zf redzone fails to do all of that, and even more so the privacy policy posted on the redzone website listed above, states:(7/14/2010)[yes zfredzone does have a privacy policy the previously mentioned issue is its not made available to users being scanned at all when its required that it be made available before a scan takes place] Before or at the time of collecting personal information, we will identify the purposes for which information is being collected. ,We will collect personal information by lawful and fair means and, where appropriate, with the knowledge or consent of the individual concerned. ,We do not consider any publicly displayed secondlife information such as usernames, account age, photos displayed to the world, payment status, join date, UUID, IP, platform, viewer, group affiliations, preferred language used, time of day, timezone, region, partner name or any other secondlife information to be private.

given these all above this is taken from the privacy policy of zf redzone, it fails to identify information is even being collected or the purpose of the collection to those it collects information on. It does not acquire consent and as proved above uses unlawful means to collect the info. While a username is public information as they say they do not consider it private, as stated above, (6) Any other identifier that permits the physical or online contacting of a specific individual., despite the publicity they must gain permission to collect your username as it is contact information. This is all required by BPC22575-22579.

I find zfire xue in further violation of BPC22575-22579 on the grounds of:

22576. An operator of a commercial Web site or online service that
collects personally identifiable information through the Web site or
online service from individual consumers who use or visit the
commercial Web site or online service and who reside in California
shall be in violation of this section if the operator fails to comply
with the provisions of Section 22575 or with the provisions of its
posted privacy policy in either of the following ways:
(a) Knowingly and willfully.
(b) Negligently and materially.

The user posts a privacy policy that violates this law by claiming in their privacy policy does things which it does not do which is to cover up that they are in knowledable and willful violation of BPC22575-22579, It also makes any legal protection their privacy Policy provides them Null and Void as they did not adhere to it.

Anyhow now that I've proven one of the people using the secondlife media exploits to identify alternate accounts is violating both the secondlife terms of service, and the law. Onto the final part of this article.

An IP address is a number that identifies your network or computer over the internet, while seemingly innocent enough for use, many services protect the discovery of this information user to user for only admins to view, there are exceptions as an IP address is not private information but it can be used to discover private information on a user or identify usage habits which is private information, or discover additional contact information as described above and prohibited by the above mentioned law BPC22575-22579, once discovered, there are more sinister uses for this information. Now you may already know IP addresses for network resources can change when a resource such as a router or PC is restarted and a connection to the ISP needs to be re-established and that online services such as google acquire IP addresses all the time, an IP address is necasary to facilitate computer to computer communication over the internet, so it must be shared, this is one of many reasons users should only connect to services they trust. I've been ridiculed for my argument against redzone by forum trolls and the such, saying things like oh noes google has my IP address, google is no big deal their legit and responsible and usually answer to issues, and better than an illegitimate service such as redzone, yes its a big deal because it then gets used to uncover identifying information. And then, theres that little troll hacker in the basement of his moms home who lives in nigeria, even worse yet. While it may simply be the address used to identify your PC over the internet and can be traced to the town your ISP operates from. And not to your door, a good analagy to IP addresses is to think of them like home addresses. Also before noting the analogy, anyone with your current IP address and the right utilities can check your network for vulnerabilities.

In explanation of this analogy lets say the internet is this very earth we stand on, people represent users and online activities such as games media, structures and facilities represent web sites and services that facilitate these, and home represents your PC on the internet, the streets the network that supports it all. And your Home address the same as your IP address, while you may subscribe to a premium service that gets you the same IP address again and again for your server, lets say you live in a trailor park and your always moving going from address to address as conditions change every so often.the local college is holding a Job fair, but has had recent issues with crime, being the redneck you are your looking for something better, or just looking for something whatever. You step out of your trailer, the trailer park can be thought of as your home router, all the other residents there are other PC's connected to that address temporarily, you venture out and you go to the job fair, the college the job fair has been held at, has had some issues with a criminal stalking people breaking into their homes, doing undue harm to people and stealing their things, before entering the college since the security is stepped up your all required to get a nametag with your IP address(home address) on it so the college police if witnessing a person committing a crime can easily identify and visit suspects and victims. A cost of privacy for a little security at the campus, a person casually passes by, bumps into you and apologizes(just like a ping request) but they observe your address and take note of it, later that night after you come home you settle in, and don't realize the person while you were at the job fair surveyed your place and found the hide a key(like a security hole being found in a vulnerability scan) later that night you are attacked and fall victim to this same person cause your address was published for the college security.

While just an analogy computers over the internet that have obtained your IP address can perform vulnerability scans which oftentimes takes form of ping and many other types of requests and if your IP address is discoverable through a service, even though it was intended to be viewed by someone else your PC can be located on the internet and targeted for a vulnerability scan and vulnerabilities can be found just like the hide a key, while you may of hid the key well like setting a port to stealth mode on your router. The vulnerability was searched for in many places, and when found you had Open Ports they may have seen what OS your running and what security measures are in place in the vulnerability scan and by gathering this info identified probabilities that your using this and that, which lead them to finding the key(the messaging service you use for example) which opens up that stealth port they just figured out you use an outdated version of windows messenger because through vulnerability scans they identified your OS(your trailor in this analagy) as being windows XP home, with the scans they further identified how to contact your browser which allows them to know many things and odd setting you didnt expect people to know like your desktop resolution which is used in PHP XML, and sometimes CSS functions to identify how to properly format the web page, various functions lead to discovery of various information about you, assumptions can be made about your online activity to identify vulnerabilities in your system. If a advertiser uses a vulnerability scan and finds signs of gaming software, and a PC running in only 800x600 they can pester and spam an email address they discovered using illegitimate means with ad's to get you a better video card, other scenarios can be potentially embarassing.

Like for example Lets say you work for a net firm, and they like to connect with gamers, one of the jobs duties may be to connect to secondlife and try to make a sale on the users there and you like to work extra hard to make that sale, you go home, and login to secondlife from your business alt. While in your business alt you use the service from your bosses location, lets say he rezzed zf redzone. He discovers your personal account, which happens to be a furry(or replace furry with your less understood side and the unusual attributes) and your character has tenticles and all sorts of other naughty features, that are your own personal business, you go into work the next day and receive the pink slip of doom, when you ask why? Your boss says I've seen that episode of CSI with the fursuiters and I know you like to screw animals you sick [expletive deleted], you just lost your job because of your own personal business thats your business and nobody elses, because zf redzone helped your boss peer into your private life and a little misinformation from a myth created by a TV show. Pretty lame isnt it?

I dont know zf redzones complete method for identifying a secondlife name, to an IP address as there are many potential methods to do so and I dont have my hand in the code however I do know its done by linking an IP address to an avatar name in the secondlife service, thats the only way it can be done. As media functions in secondlife reveal IP address and the viewer nor the service make alternate accounts discoverable. It could be just simply comparing who entered the parcel and when a stream was accessed and looking at shoutcast streams IP address list and tagging the newest IP on the list with the avatar name and submitting it to the redzone service, this method is inaccurate but would yield the information redzone seeks, zf redzone could temporarily change the parcel media to direct to a website as a user enters a parcel and have the extension of the web address match the name like exampleIPLoggingsite.com/Treminari/Huet while this method is inaccurate it would yield results, or it could just be simply singling out lone people on parcels and checking to see if one person is tuned into the stream and assuming the person on the secondlife parcel is one in the same, another inaccurate method, there are methods and tests and procedures to determining an IP address of a secondlife user with media enabled with 100% accuracy, and secondlife shared media feature titled media on a prim that allows more flexibility in acquiring an IP address, higher accuracy, easier to perform, and dont require land. While I doubt zf redzone uses this method one thing is certain, it uses IP addresses tagged with avatar names and recent comparisons of the address to identify an alt. You can combine the above methods in various ways to achieve higher accuracy using these inaccurate methods but, there are several disturbingly simple easy to perform methods which will get you the IP address of a user through parcel or media on a prim with 100% accuracy, which I must leave unnamed and undescribed as to not promote them, im sure many of these methods could be used to improve redzones accuracy in discovering it but I dont promote the illegal activities of zfire xue and theBoris gothly with the redzone utility.

Given that someone can get your IP address, through shared media, even if you dont take your privacy seriously or feel you have nothing to hide from you should still take the IP discoverability issue with secondlife media seriously. Though non documented, a vulnerability scan as mentioned before can be used to assess the security state of a discovered users PC and determine weak points in the security(maybe their running a dated version of VNC that allows remote control of their PC for when they go to the office, and has an 8 character length limit for the password that can easily be entered via brute force password scanning) whatever the vulnerabilitiy of the system IP discoverability in secondlife, makes the vulnerability discoverable. User to user, and allows the user to know just who their targeting for attack.

Theres things the lindens can do to fix this, but that would be expensive and unreasonable such as providing every sim a proxy server, or making all sims act as a proxy server, and through flash and java exploits could circumvent these methods. There are things Linden Labs can do that is inexpensive to Mitigate reduce and nearly eliminate privacy and vulnerability issues with secondlife media. First off, they need to take abuse reports seriously, the report field needs to be longer in abuse reports so people can site their resources in proving a case of spyware, even keeping things brief in description there are so many things you need to say to prove it to the lindens. Also they need to start answering to reports of spyware, when an AR failed I submitted it into a support ticket, both lindens responding to that ticket ignored it and did nothing but yap. Also reporting items on xstreet using the report item button needs to be taken more serious your limited to 255 characters in your typed report on xstreet. Also you cannot report an item that has been reported and not investigated yet, you will get an error message saying a report for this item already exists. While you may have been going to file a report saying this item uses media exploits to log IP address to avatar name to make alternate accounts discoverable, some idiot who has no business using the system may have just clicked report, and wrote in this item violated me and do little to nothing to say the incursion which in turn prevents your report, if I was to make an unethical tool such as this I could very well make an alt, and clog the report item system daily against my item so others couldn't report it. Linden Labs Needs to investigate spyware claims, and take users more serious, and they also need to allow multiple people to file a report against an xstreet item just like an object on the grid. Also Linden Labs needs to bring back the warning message that I used to see back in viewer 1.16 or was it 1.18? that tells you when you turn on a stream for the first time and warns you it makes your system discoverable and your IP viewable, doesn't have to give a big disclaimer, but it needs to remind people and allow them to decide for themselves that media can make their PC discoverable and decide what their risks are in using it, the message should be like, warning:using media makes your computers IP address available outside of secondlife, and that addresses can be directed by scripted means, only utilize streams in locations that you trust, Linden labs is not responsible for the actions of other users its a clear concise message which will concern those who need to be concerned and give them a heads up, they can research the topic further if their scared. Also the new web on a Prim feature gives griefers and spyware makers more flexibility in exploiting shared media, there are things that can be done to limit discoverability, by default this options is completely on, and you can turn it off but only completely. There is an option to only load websites on prims when you give the OK but it is easily circumvented(can be disabled by clicking Me > preferences > Sound & Media, and unchecking allow media to auto-play). However if you've been around secondlife you've noticed people can deform your avatar and if your knowledgeable of the method their doing it by gaining animation permissions on you through an object that sits on click and having that object follow your avatar around to load the animation as soon as you click the wrong place and the object often self deletes once its dirty deed is done, there are other methods to performing this attack on users but this is beside the point of this post, the same way they can trick you into sitting on a derformer, you can be tricked into playing shared media, all it takes is a prim set to 100% alpha to follow your avatar around and then load the media exploit all in the same way. Why does this work though? Because all it takes is a single left click to play the media on a prim so turning off autoplay can easily be circumvented, since linden labs does nothing to fix it, and there is plenty of fixes in the Jira suggested none of which they've acted on Ill put in my word here, add the play button for a media source to the right mouse button and dont play media that becomes left clicked. SIMPLE! This obscenely simple fix will mitigate the issue with this method greatly, also many don't know this because its burried away but in the top right corner of the screen in secondlife 2.0 if you mouse over the play button with auto play disabled, a tool bar will pop up that contains a more button, press this button and you will get a display of all the URL's prims are attempting to load around you, this will let you view site addresses before letting them display in your viewer, however here in lyes another serious issue there are 2 buttons one to stop/play the selected item on that list, and another to automatically draw your camera focus to that object, whats the problem? The one that draws your camera focus to the selected item also automatically plays that item. So if you see something suspicious on your land like the URL www.exampleexploitsitehere.com and you click to give focus to that item in trying to locate it, you just also gave it permission to display in your viewer, when you may of just been trying to locate the object displaying the malicious site, you just loaded it on your PC ouch. Linden Labs can fix this simple to just make the buttons do their individual functions and not the function of the other one as well.

I myself defend myself from this I don't use the linden viewer for any purpose beyond my education on it as the interface is poor and with the half thought out security option to disable autoplay viewer 2.0 is more vulnerable to this exploit. I use emerald. Yes I know the team that worked on it did use the media exploit too, no theres nothing I myself have found in their viewer to spy on the user, for a safer more secure secondlife experience, you should use a mature well developed viewer based on secondlife 1.23 such Hippo Opensim or emerald(there are others) and you should disable media, and there is another exploit in the viewer that actually allows you to protect yourself more. Secondlife 1.23 does not allow users to see the stream URL they connect to. However in the advanced menu(ctrl+Alt+D) if the media URL is hidden you can select the option show admin options while attempting to use the admin options that become revealed will be logged in some cases by Linden Labs there is one advantage, by clicking the location name on the top of your screen and bringing up the land information you can see what the media URL is for that location and make your decision whether or not the URL should connect to your PC then(of course I recommend turning this off as soon as your done) and from here you can paste this URL into the play URL option for your favorite media player Like Windows Media Player, Winamp, XMMS, or whatever you prefer to use. Taking this extra step after disabling media completely in your viewer increases your security by allowing you not to accidentally play a media stream in secondlifes viewer whether it be accidentally hitting play or turning automatic play on, it also makes you more secure against objects that may temporarily switch the media option for a really brief moment to discover IPs of those connected.

Aside from how to defend yourself you the reader is probably wondering, How you can make a difference in the media issues with secondlife, there are several things you can do to help:

-Educate Other secondlife users about these exploits, refer them to this blog Post
-Visit http://jira.secondlife.com/secure/Dashboard.jspa and educate yourself about the Jira, search it for issues related to the media problem that suggest a fix, I myself am still trying to decide which to vote for. As theres several suggestions as to how to make viewer 2.0 safer
-If you visit the secondlife Jira Linked above and have a better solution than those proposed, observe how to create a Jira article, and write your solution and encourage others to vote for it.
-Don t give people the information their looking for, don't just leave the streaming media on full time, turn it off always when not in use.
-Don t visit sites or buy products that claim to give you information on another secondlife user or claim they can effect the user off the grid or detect anything secondlife doesn't normally allow you to do yourself.

Things you can do about current infractions against your privacy on secondlife:
-Visit http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/contact.shtm or http://www.ic3.gov/complaint/default.aspx and report spyware authors that violate the law. Remember as stated earlier under this article all users using the secondlife service are protected by the California Privacy Protection act which BPC22575-22579 defines, the FTC link is obviously to the FTC, and the IC3 Link is to the FBI's internet crime department, both deal in issues of spyware.
-Use the report item Button in xstreet and file a report item complaint against spyware for a terms of service violation 8.3, and when writing the report site what you know about the spyware and resources that prove its spyware.
-visit the location of known spyware while protecting yourself from it by disabling media and use the report abuse button on the offending object, report spyware you see rezzed and vending systems that sell it such as the vendor for zf redzone in vsevolod/182/49/113(there is a spyware vendor for the zf redzone system as well as the spyware security orb there itself on top of the building with the vendors)

Edit:just lovely I see the text editor I started writing this in dropped out all my quotation marks when I copied it to here!

Edit: looked at the Item Discussion found another part of the privacy Policy TheBoris Gothly and zfire xue are hiding behind will post it below here as not to disrupt my Original article:

from the item discussion at 2010-05-08 12:17:57:

we do permit these companies to collect your IP address. These companies may set and use cookies, web beacons, pixels, or other technologies to collect anonymous information about your visits to our Websites, and may otherwise aggregate, analyze and anonymize that data.

Lets look at that in whole shall we?:

Third Party Advertisements

Linden Lab participates in ad and/or affiliate networks operated by various third party companies. These companies collect and may use certain anonymous information about your visits to our Websites as a function of referring Internet traffic to our Websites. We do not permit these companies to collect any personal information about you, such as your name, address, or email address; however, we do permit these companies to collect your IP address. These companies may set and use cookies, web beacons, pixels, or other technologies to collect anonymous information about your visits to our Websites, and may otherwise aggregate, analyze and anonymize that data. If you seek information about these specialized advertising technologies, the Network Advertising Initiative offers useful information about Internet advertising companies (also called "ad networks" or "network advertisers"), including information about how to opt-out of their information collection.

Lets Explain it shall we? first off, this is the advertising Policy, a Policy in regards to advertisements only. It also says the companies may collect and use certain information. so obviously in certain information this is information released by Linden Labs you can view this here btw: http://secondlife.com/corporate/privacy.php and the 2 previous paragraphs pretty much limit information collected to website visits and lindex exchange, and disallow personal information which as defined by BPC22575-22579 is account names held as they are contact information, while this paragraph permits collection of IP address it does not permit use of this to datamine a user and lets look into the big part of this that they hide behind

These companies may set and use cookies, web beacons, pixels, or other technologies to collect anonymous information about your visits to our Websites

ok first off the information must remain anonymous, it is contact information that is being collected not completely anonymous by any standard, so that's a violation of the privacy policy, second off it pertains to information collected about visits to the websites operated by Linden Labs like visiting secondlife.com, and as said before its an advertising policy, this policy permits advertisers to set up properly targeted ads, much in the same way googles ad sense works where as advertisements can be properly directed(so they can match IP address to search terms), this also pertains to xstreet. ever notice how that advertisement banner at the top of the search usually has something related to what your searching for vaguely related to an item in the search? this policy is to assist in the operation of functions like that. also aside from this, the information being collected on you by zfire xue and his redzone system has no method of opt out oh and something else I totally forgot to mention, which this privacy policy states, is this guy an affiliate of Linden Labs? I don't think so. If he was I think he would understand the privacy policy a little better and know that this section pertains solely to advertising, but as with any other part of the policy he quotes he conveniently leaves stuff out, he is in knowledgeable violation of it as you can see above he conveniently leaves parts out which is clearly intentional. A business affiliate of Linden Labs would not do this because they know they can be sued by both Linden Labs and the userbase they effected. In which bbrings me to another part of the terms of Service:

8.2 You will not post or transmit prohibited Content, including any Content that is illegal, harassing or violates any person's rights.

in accordance with BPC22575-22579 since Linden Labs operates out of california which specifically makes spyware illegal as it falls under the protection of BPC22575-22579 aside from violating our rights the content of zf redzone is specifically illegal

(i) Post, display or transmit Content that violates any law, or the rights of any third party including without limitation Intellectual Property Rights;

(ii) Impersonate any person or entity without their consent, or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation;

hes misrepresenting his affiliation obviously, hes obviously violating our right to privacy and hes obviosly breaking the law in doing so as ive touched on a many of times in this article BPC22575-22579.

(iv) Post, display or transmit Content that is harmful, threatening or harassing, defamatory, libelous, false, inaccurate, misleading, or invades another person's privacy;

nuff said that's covered in section 8.3 which I kept saying but all in all the zf redzone product invades user privacy

and yet again under section 8.2 as with section 8.3:

Any violation by you of the terms of this Section may result in immediate suspension or termination of your Accounts without any refund or other compensation.