Geo Location and beyond

Well we all know what geo-location is.... but thats an assumption, so I will explain it in brief, its a Process of tracking a packet across the Internet and reading the information on Internet routers in order to see where the packet goes, this process can locate city and state a user lives in, but may be inaccurate as far as city goes and may identify a city nearby, for example running a Geo Location service against me, would identify me as a user from Victorville California, While not from Victorville, It's so to say only a stones throw away from me, as we know zfire xue with their redzone product goes as far as to use Geo Location against a user, Well many ISP's have hoped to bring advertising to users to a more local level, not just simply ad's like" burn baby burn" for CD Burning software anyone can order, or "Hot girls in Victorville are looking for you" for a town that is likely the users residence or close by, but bringing users ad's for their local Grocery store or the like, Well some ISP's have figured out a way to share enough information to bring users more localized ad's in their web browsing experience, so that they could get a cut of the advertising revenue, while normally I provide links to news sites I've read and whatnot I feel it would be best to leave out this in the case of this blog article is read by privacy violators, however I would like to note, that if your ISP is involved in this advertising program or one of its affiliates, it is possible through HTTP requests such as those used by secondlifes media that an advertiser, or somebody wishing to violate privacy such as Redzone to obtain more detailed information. However unfortunately as it appears such privacy violating systems does not use such info(it would be more accurate than using an IP address as redzone does) I wont name or explain this system in detail or at all for that matter, however, I will say this much, I emailed a Linden involved with Linden Labs security the same article I read for their viewing and told them what Jira articles it related to VWR-21305, VWR-24746, and VWR-17044 and described to them why this is such a threat to users, to give an Idea as to how accurate this information is, where as I said Victorville is a stones throw from my home, the information revealed by ISP's involved in this advertising program can put someone within a half hours walking distance of my home, and also allow such privacy violators to know exactly the very post office I visit!

Anyhow, I would like to apologize for the lack of detail in this blogpost, and the lack of my usual transparency where I Provide links to my information sources, but I'm trying to avoid giving instructions as to how to do this, how to use this information, and avoid providing a means to see how, the only person I've told in Full Detail the potential nastiness for this exploit is the particular Linden I emailed, but I thought I would say the potential violation of privacy with this issue, again I apologize for the sloppy writing but its difficult when ommitting potentially abusable details.

A couple Jira topics In Need of votes

Well theres a Jira topic that suggests fixing the issue that allows redzone to happen and yet another Jira topic suggesting we get rid of zf redzone, you can view and vote for both topics here:

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17044

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-24746

I noticed these both on the greenzone mouthpiece blog which you can view here:

http://greenzonemouthpiece.blogspot.com/?zx=c7242f21b6dfe88

anyhow In the topic suggesting a ban of redzone if you view the comments section you can see oz linden commenting that this is not a viewer issue and should be dealt with support, as we all know support only passes the buck after a week or two if they even get to you at all and sais file an AR where it is promptly ignored, I've filed several notifying LL of zfire xue's illegal activity, but oz linden didn't stop there, he even went as far as to threaten to revoke a Users Jira privileges because supposedly this is not a viewer issue, even though this is related to a security hole in the viewers media functionality



"Oz Linden added a comment - 08/Feb/11 12:54 PM
Regardless... this is still not a viewer issue.
If you reopen this here, your Jira privileges will be revoked."



given the extended time Linden Labs has not responded to the privacy violation issues and the stance a Linden has taken and the number of notices they have ignored regarding the illegal activity taking place on their servers, and numerous ignored abuse reports from me and many other secondlife users, it might be a good idea to start taking our complaints outside of secondlife and to organizations such as the FTC, IC3, BBB, and filing the complaints against Linden Labs itself, as redzone is not the only privacy violating tool on secondlife, I hear a system called CDS does the same thing as redzone and yet another system cropped up that does the same thing I found myself called quickware alts pro, if you know of another organization that handles such criminal activity inside or outside the US that might handle such complaints, other privacy laws these illegal tools violate inside or outside the US(like BPC22575-22579), feel free to leave a comment get it some mention and perhaps get this bad situation dealt with

Edit:Found an additional Jira article that addresses this issue:
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-21305

Well this is disturbing

if you've ever confronted zfire xue or theBoris Gothly about privacy violations you've probably gotten the same rant I got, redzone is about protecting businesses in secondlife from copybot and the business owners don't care who your alts are well we all know thats bullshit and...... it gets worse.

http://forcemesilverspar.blogspot.com/2011/02/redzone-warning.html

Give the blog a read through if you have an alt and want any privacy.

so much for that alt I created to keep a separation between my personal and business life on SL.

Greenzone a counter Product to Redzone

Well over a week ago I came across a tool called greenzone on secondlife marketplace:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/GreenZone-Not-sold-by-me-any-more-Click-to-read-why/1849012

now at:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/GreenZone-Detect-zF-RedZone-Keep-your-privacy/1907392

anyhow at first I found it only provided a false sense of security with version 1.8, however I recently attached the tool and it sent an update to version 2.1 its now something I can recommend as I tested it and it seems to work great!

version 1.8 of greenzone had a major flaw, it could only detect redzone orbs within 96m and most users hide theirs high up in the sky and way out of the users reach, this could be a serious problem if your relying on this for security. as it would be likely that redzone spyware would detect a user before the user detected it. this limitation could compromise user security by giving a false sense of security, version 2.1 is much much better, I visited a sim that I knew had the redzone orb that I used to frequent called balcones which hosts the "extreme fetishists club", they have a redzone orb in plain view behind the bar counter of their club, I flew up to about 900m and the greenzone HUD attachment was still alerting me to the presence of a redzone orb.

while the script contained in the tool is no modify which makes me wonder how it works and whether or not its reliable enough to depend on for security(i still would recommend keeping media functionality disabled in your viewer) it does have a much higher chance of alerting you to zfire xues continued illegal activity and ToS violations in secondlife, and better yet, their transferable and copyable, I recommend picking one up from secondlife marketplace if you absolutely must use the media functions in your viewer time to time.

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/GreenZone-Detect-zF-RedZone-Keep-your-privacy/1907392

EDIT:forgot to mention theres another blog that lists discovered redzone privacy violations.
you can find it here: http://greenzonemouthpiece.blogspot.com/

Aventity - Chimera uses zf redzone which violates your privacy

Normally when I find stolen content from content creators that's been copybotted or perm exploited in some way or another I file abuse reports against the thief, today I filed an Abuse report against the content creator, why else? when they went whining about it to get other people into filing an abuse report against the thief they revealed they were doing something just as bad as the thief, using zf redzone to spy on their customers, their content got stolen by the thief they mentioned all the same, so zf redzone sure didn't do a lot to protect them did it?

anyhow I don't have much L's coming in that I don't put into uploading textures and what not on my own content I work on on an alternate account, when I see something I like I make a shopping list and when I have a lot extra to spare I usually go ahead and Buy a few things from that shopping list, today I took about 5000L off the list without buying any of it and decided that Ill spend my money where it counts on other content creators that are treating their customers right like Luskwood, with that said your probably wondering who it is that had the zf redzone security orb, it was Chimera Avatar parts and accessories, which is owned by Mephitis Jezebel who also runs Aventity avatars, and partnered to Chef Soderstrom whom brought the redzone security orb to my attention, he sent out a notice which had a notecard attached, I viewed the notecard hoping to find out if any of the content I had created has been copybotted or not only to be disappointed in finding the notecard had a blurry attached useless texture and that they had been using zf redzone to supposedly protect their content, normally in this case, of receiving notice someones stealing content I would support them and file an AR on their behalf to help draw the Lindens attention to the issue regarding the notice I saw, but this, finding out they use redzone I'm just going to ignore it, and ignore filing the AR next time I see someone handing out their content(by all means I wont accept stolen content period but normally when I encounter stolen content I file AR's in supporting the creator and notify them of it, wont be doing them this favor any longer.

Anyhow your probably wondering about how this caught my attention I got a group notice from one of the groups im in "avatar makers guild" which had notecards attached from chef soderstrom and go as follows:





Notice:"Tis the season for avatar theft:
Dawnstar Attis, a new alt of crystalie Jigsaw/Carami who was previously banned by LL for proven content theft + harassment, is handing out a notecard named "Merry Christmas," which contains permission-hacked avatars made by AVentity, Curious, Mutation Industries, and more. They are doing this out of spite (they've already viciously attacked me and others in IMs) and won't stop, even claiming that their bad rep is all a lie, despite numerous witnesses and logs proving otherwise. Please keep an eye out.

Notecard:"To ALL Creators/Artists"
Hello, there is a person going around under a series of alts that is passing out notecards similar to the following containing permission hacked avatars which possibly contain some of your avatars. They have currently been banned under two names that i know of (crystalie Jigsaw and crystalie Carami)


This person is idiodic enough to continue making alts with the same profile information along with passing ownership of certain groups to the new alts they make to avoid bans. I have attached a photograph of the older characters that are now banned for more evidence.

[]Snapshot of Older Names
[]Snapshot of Notecard with Items
[]Merry Christmas


The notecard has had the items removed, however a snapshot shows the notecard with the links to the items. (This is to prevent this notecard from being passed maliciously)

Please pass this notecard along to fellow avatar creators/associates so that this is more well known. This user has also been banned under the zfRedzone system multiple times along with being banned from almost all furnation sims and popular furry clubs.

I have also taken a snapshot with a tripcode typed in the description so that if this notecard is altered maliciously it will be a safeguard.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Abuse Report that I submitted, feel free to use this
---------------------------------------------------------------
Reason : Fraud -> Chain letters
Description: Ban Evasion (3rd) Sending notecards with perm. hacked items


This person is an alt of Crystalie Carami and crystalie jigsaw (Both of these users banned for passing out permission based avatars along with items before) Included in the screenshot is the image of the inventory item properties along with the notecard itself, which reads.

Dear girls
now is the christmas over us so i want to give u all a christmas gift
so here are they (links to hacked avatars)
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM YOUR Dawnstar Attis

You can look at the profile of dawnstar attis and find that it is the exact same as crystalie jigsaw along with crystalie carami, they are also head of the same groups

----------------------------------------------------------------


Thanks for your time,
Chef






viewing Mephitis Jezebels Profile and visiting her store I found a zf redzone security orb using Imprudences Area Object Search feature right atop her store for Chimera avatar parts and accessories, where she attempted to obscure the orb by putting a small Box around it.

zf redzone can disrupt secondlife service for residents of the UAE

Seems redzone can and will discriminate against countries with filtered internet service like the UAE



Just the other night I got contacted by a Secondlife user from the United Arab Emirates, this user told me that they had been banned and given the boot from several different regions indiscriminately by the zf redzone security orb oftentimes as a result they would speak to the land owner of the land and most the time the land owner would ask them to appeal but one actually went looking into it for them and found that this person according to redzones so called 120% accurate alt detections that this person had a terrifyingly huge slew of alts, none of these accounts it had linked to this individual belonged to them, as a result of the inaccuracy the land owner removed their redzone security orb so this person may enter the land but however, as another result they started researching redzone and found my blog and personally IMed me in secondlife to ask me about it and find out why it had associated so many accounts as alternate accounts belonging to them, really I hadn't a clue how it could do that, but some inquiry back and forth between me and this individual and a little research on their country lead to the answer.

One of my inquiries with this person, was about Proxy servers, as I have encountered a number of secondlife users who have said I'm safe, I'm using Tor, as Tor may seem to have many Proxy servers in service, really compared to the number of SL users using it it is conceivable that some Tor users may be routed through the same IP and thus show false positives of being alternate accounts of each other, while this user wasn't a Tor user, the inquiry about Proxies had led me to discover that their internet service was proxied after further inquiry, and a little bit of brief Googling I learned a lot more about internet service in the UAE.

Turns out most internet service in the UAE comes down to a single provider known EIM(Emirates Internet and Multimedia), however the service through EIM is censored through a set of Proxy servers, and if you don't configure it which most people don't you are routed through a common proxy by default, the typical use of a proxy server is to filter outbound personally identifying information and mask IP addresses by resending your traffic each way, however countries such as the UAE use it as a point to centrally administer internet traffic requests to websites outside the country so that your search can be filtered, EIM's purpose for Proxying all traffic within the UAE according to my research is to filter out and to block users from viewing porn on the internet.

The side effect of proxying service for the purpose of moderating and censoring a users internet activity in such a way though somewhat effective does have a a side effect, it results in a very small pool of IP addresses for a countries residents and also results in many subscribers to the internet service over there to share IP's within that common pool(multiple secondlife accounts using the same proxy thus appearing to have the same IP), the result being one of these many many many users going through that proxy may have used a viewer that was either a copybot viewer, or falsely detected as such, the end result is that zf Redzone has listed this user as having many alternate accounts which don't actually belong to them and belong to many other users of EIM, which are banned by Redzone as well, while I can't say it's banned the whole country its conceivable with the way IPs are pooled and proxied under EIM that many groups of users from the UAE are probably clumped into groups where hundreds of people are considered alts of each other, and when one of those people in one of these groupings gets detected as a copybot whether it be false or not its safe to say the rest of the group gets banned as such.

Linden Labs really needs to finish Mesh support.... Correctly

Well the other night a friend was telling me excitedly mesh was in beta, I don't really have anything currently done in mesh format and was kinda disappointed it would go so far in development before hitting public Beta, but I started making an inquiry about it asking several questions of some things it should have very basic at minimum that it turned out to be lacking, not being very knowledgeable of it yet and having not tried it out myself yet I refrained from posting a Jira article Until I knew a bit better, the very late the next day a friend gave to me a Jira article she had written, I read it said it was a good idea but was half asleep so I said I would read it again and vote for it later, well I've read it again and it's a damn great Idea. Really with that said it would be crazy and stupid for Linden Labs to release mesh format in it's current state without implementing the suggestion which can be found here as this suggestion suggests some very basic things that make using the Collada format all the worth while:

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-23447

Pretty much the standard avatar mesh with the sliders and all that, you can replace that with a custom mesh with Mesh import, however Linden Labs was pretty sloppy with allowing users to set a replacement for that mesh, One issue I had been preaching the whole time time this was in closed beta was that Linden Labs needs to allow meshes to be anchored to the avatar shape in some way. In it's current implementation Linden Labs has failed to do so, which is a very basic thing and it is essential for Mesh to be relevant and useful for avatar meshes. In the current implementation of mesh when you replace the standard avatar mesh, all those sliders you get in Edit appearance, don't mean much to the mesh itself, thus meaning if your a human avatar and go to a store and Buy a mesh from a content creator, or are a furry who buys this cute fox avatar you like, your going to look exactly like in shape as everyone else who has purchased the same mesh, thus taking away your individual appearance and not making mesh useful beyond being able to structure rezzable Objects, this Jira Topic addresses that issue and beyond and suggests allowing Morph targets, which content creators can bind to shapes and various other aspects, which will make the sliders in edit appearance useful once again when using a custom Mesh in place of the default avatar mesh, and giving power to tweaking your shape once again with options such as torso length and such, who knows the user might buy a mesh to make them look like a super model and decide the breasts are too big, I'm guessing most will assume not big enough, or maybe they might want to be a little thicker and heavier set or they might like the basic shape of the avatar mesh their looking at but may wish to tweak the sliders so that their weighted a little more or less realistic, this Jira article above puts that bit of customization back in users hands, as with the current implementation of mesh they lose the power to tweak their shape like that when using a mesh, maybe you might just be using mesh so that your avatar looks like it has toes rather than blended together stubs on it's feet, whatever the reason, this Jira article adds back in the flexibility of that, also aside from that it addresses further issues as well, as many of you know, when you wear a jacket clothing layer the default Mesh for avatars morphs a bit so that the sleeves are wider than your arms and it falls into sliders, Yes content creators being able to set morph targets also addresses this as well, as they will be able to set their avatar up to widen in the arms or pants, simply put clothing the current way it's Implemented may be able to wrap around digigrade legs if the modeler took it into consideration with this Jira article in effect, or in the case of a human avatar, maybe that more muscly shape. some people think that standard clothing will become irrelevant with the introduction of mesh clothing, however mesh clothing may not fit everyone's mesh properly without this capability to support morph targets, also creating clothing the old way and being able to use it with custom meshes, enables indefinite flexibility with clothes as standard clothing will be able to fit just about any mesh that is made keeping it in mind. After all you users the community have pushed hard to get Linden Labs to use Collada format, you better ask them to make the most of it as well, otherwise we may as well of been using OBJ without what this Jira article suggest, So vote for it now, this is an absolute must if you care about the presentation aspect of secondlife at all!

and Onto the next point about mesh...

Also my friend made another Important suggestion, not everyone wants to be human, also the way mesh is currently setup the way a Collada mesh is anchored to the skeleton of an avatar kinda makes avatars with custom meshes move as though there a stuffed teddy bear rather than a person or thing that has bones in it, a topic addressing this can be found here:

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-23448

This topic suggests that content creators be given more Power over how the skeleton works and allow content creators to customize the skeleton which not only allows people to define extra limbs such as tails and the such within their mesh, but it also extends this capability so content creators can tweak the skeleton of content they create, thus allowing the avatar mesh to respond to animation better where as the body moves more stiffly in some points and looser in others, so the importance of this topic though seemingly focused on furry also extends to people not into the furry scene as important to human avatars as well, as content creators will be able to extend their skeleton to move and respond better to animation.

If you would like to see mesh in it's current state, It's not bad, but its lacking a lot of absolutely needed potential as you can see here attachment meshes can be associated with parts of the skeleton to bend with it in the hair:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1STH6Qy4fik&feature=related

but take notice of the boot, while it bends well this could be greatly improved upon in realism of the motion.

also if you watch this below video closely around the bunny avatars midsection you can see there some flaws in how its the torso is anchored to the skeleton, custom skeletons in the mesh would allow it to move and respond better to animation, By giving content creators who make meshes more power over how things flex and respond to animation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_n29fFxQkI

really mesh in its state is incomplete without the above suggested functionality, while it is much better than what we had before its lacking a lot and I find it to be truly incomplete and in this incomplete state it might take something from the end result of your own personal look without it, so if your reading all this, drop to the web addresses below, sign in with your secondlife name click votes and click the button to vote for the issue.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-23447

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-23448