New Wave of Second Life Bots

[Nestis Carthage]

I have built a few SL bots myself, for personal use. Using llGetAgentLanguage() to "detect" bots is very flawed; especially since other viewers can opt to not share that information.

At some point you just gotta stop caring or get a private region, or turn on avatars on other parcels cannot see me.

My avatar is a bot.

I must have missed something somewhere, how does get agent language help you detect bots?
Usually to be quite fair, there is someone behind the avatar.. they move heads and I have seen active crosshairs. Hence why I am catagorizing them as "stalkers". I am sure bots can be programmed to do these actions, but its the human programmer that I am speaking about. They are also using ilegal viewers, as I spent several hours building in a closed/group entry only sim and watched 3 of the bots from this list, tp into the sim and sit there for a large amount of time. None of them are in the group.

 

[clavilux]

Myself and a few others would like to share that there is more data being collected then what Mr. Clavilux claims. I would also like to note that he has created software and sells said software for these so called "bots". The other data that he collects, is who is on the sim. And somehow if you are lucky enough to be on that list of special people he tracks, ( I say he, because it is either him or someone he has sold his software to) you will be inundated with bots on every single sim you visit, whether you have been to this sim previously or not. With over 23,000 sims I can no longer believe it is a coincidence that they show up when I tp somewhere.

I do not collect other information than what I have said I do. I understand that confirmation bias can easily affect judgement, but in reality 23,000 sims aren't that much. For the handful of bots I run, I usually have throughput of 5000 - 8000 regions per hour.

Also, I do not participate in any of the said software business nor do I have a list of "special people". Please get your facts right before you start pointing fingers.

This is a current list of his frequent flyer program:

Not even half of those are mine, so I can't speak for them.

I am sure this is not the complete list, but i have extensive records and can prove that they have all shown up in my local chat as being on sim (within radar) at least a dozen times , in several areas of second life (Aka not just one sim)

Such is the case for thousands of others too. Just crunch the numbers. I can tell you there is no stalking whatsoever going on from my end, but can't attest to the other bots.

At some point you just gotta stop caring or get a private region, or turn on avatars on other parcels cannot see me.

Indeed.

 

[Joey001]

Again a new wave of Bots

eadroter Resident
letring Resident
bledeferobs Resident
coardepine Resident
hourutolo Resident
mplantoncen Resident

 

[Joey001]

There are two types of data that's gathered:
- Parcel information: Owner, group, claim date, position, dimensions, flags, dwell, whitelist, blacklist, etc. for statistics.
- Groups: Who belong to which groups. This is to map relationships between communities.

You can tell which data is being gathered by the time a bot spends on a single region, if it's less than 2 minutes, it's gathering parcel information. Otherwise it is gathering group information.

The data is gathered through modified metaverse clients so no LSL is used.

Selecting regions is done by weighted randomisation, where these factors count towards a region getting picked:
- time since the last update (the longer it's been, the more it's likely to get picked)
- parcel dwells
- how many changes the parcels tend to have between the updates

The individual bots keep track of which regions and parcels they've been banned from, but this resets daily.

its non of your business so stay away

 

[RozWright]

I must have missed something somewhere, how does get agent language help you detect bots?

Some bot/text clients don't return a language. That was the case with MetaBOLT, but other text/bot clients allow you to set a language so it's not a great indicator, and some non-bots use text viewers for various tasks.

Not even half of those are mine, so I can't speak for them.

There doesn't appear to be anything nefarious about Clav's SLKB group of bots (Rollyverp, Plagate, Trabeate, Uridine, Cartometer, Noddypeak, VarTabed, Spicaceous, Admanuensis, SurveyPilch, jvaniloquence, and inundation), as they're clearly identified as bots in their profiles.

People use bots for different reasons. I'm using an experimental bot client to generate an illusion of autonomy with my NPC crew. The creator of the client allowed bots to teleport to various sims to socialize and increase their vocabulary (simple markov chain + keyword hybrid). Watching a bot learn and incorporate that information into conversation is fascinating.

 

[FinniganAlton]

I see these all the time popping in and out of my land. Labs must use them for something or they would give us an option to ban them. I mean there is a age-restricted and payment-on-file access setting, but not a bot setting for the parcels soooo that tells me something.

And why do they spin in a circle and their head move? Is there a purpose for that? I always thought they were copy-bots stealing all the objects

 

[Fionalein]

I see these all the time popping in and out of my land. Labs must use them for something or they would give us an option to ban them.

You cannot prevent Lab accounts from entering... even if you had an option to ban bots, a Lab bot could just walk into your land without restrictions.

 

[FinniganAlton]

You cannot prevent Lab accounts from entering... even if you had an option to ban bots, a Lab bot could just walk into your land without restrictions.

Well, sure that is to be expected as far as the Lab. But my point was that for other peoples bots, they don't allow a setting in the viewer to prevent them like they do for the age-restriction and payment-on-file land access options. They could offer that function, but they don't. So bots must be something they want running around for some reason.

 

[Clara D.]

Well, sure that is to be expected as far as the Lab. But my point was that for other peoples bots, they don't allow a setting in the viewer to prevent them like they do for the age-restriction and payment-on-file land access options. They could offer that function, but they don't. So bots must be something they want running around for some reason.

It's more likely they just never added the filter when adding the "bot" option to accounts rather than "wanting" them.

There might be an abaondoned Jira about it, but if there isn't you could start a new one which will be ignored for 3-5 years, assigned to Workingonit Linden for another 3+ years, then closed as "will not fix."