Data scraping: update

The media patch mentioned for Phoenix has, as reported earlier, now arrived in Henri Beauchamp’s Cool VL Viewer, in a somewhat modified form.

And already it is proving its worth for those concerned with attempts by others to scrape and gather IP addresses for the purposes of match – or simply gathering avatar information in general for the purposes of profiling & possible stalking.

• Theia Magic, had a run-in a while ago with a club owner who was either somewhat economical with the truth during their exchange – or was playing a game of “place the RedZone, removed the RedZone, place the RedZone again when no-one is looking”. As it seems that, despite his loud denials as to running RedZone, he does in fact have it deployed and hidden. Given he’s been trolling the “old” official forums loudly denying he has or would use RedZone, getting caught out has obviously left him with the produce of several chickens on his face – or at least, that’s how I look upon the “colourful metaphors” he employs in his exchange with Theia.
• The Hair Fair that has been running of late and has been widely advertised also appears to be running RedZone. Whether it is the organisers or an individual store is unclear; however, the patch flagged aggressive media stream pushing that resolved to the RedZone server as soon as a number of people using Henri’s Viewer arrived. The interesting thing here is that Greenzone failed to give any alerts.
• Theia has now started a list of in-world locations that are attempting to deliberately mask their use of RedZone (see link above). So much for the RedZone Challenge initiated by Ciaran Laval in an attempt to gain transparency.

Quickware (another spying tool) has been linked to the IP Address 193.93.174.118.

Elsewhere, and connected with the use of the new patch, A “new” mystery domain has now been revealed as popping up frequently around the grid, again aggressively pushing a media URL onto people arrival at stores and venues. URL resolves to a domain called m.sparkgap.info (IP 69.163.222.23). It is unclear as to precisely what this is doing: speculation points to it possibly being related to CDS, but this is far from confirmed.

Caution certainly dictates both of these IPs are added to your firewall for blocking purposes – and in the case of m.sparkgap.info, added to your host file if you are technically-minded. Prior to the release of the media patch, there was speculation that it would probably uncover a lot more in the way of mysterious use (as opposed to outright misuse) people build around media streaming. m.sparkgap.info may yet be the tip of the iceberg.

Finally, Itazura Radio has some fun at the RedZoners’ expense while making some very valid points (sorry I cannot embed; EMI apparently get ticked off with me if I try).

And Cummere Mayo provides some excellent advice for those wishing to lose friends and alienate people.

A new working week commences tomorrow; one in which the new Community Platform is unveiled. This could well be a testing time for the Lab in terms of measuring up their actions against the words of their new CEO.

Further Information:

• The humongous SLU thread on the subject (now with summaries!) – it is a monster, but an enlightening and addictive read
• Henri Beauchamp’s Cool VL Viewer with media patch
• Theia Magic’s blog with RedZone listings
• no2Redzone – the latest information, information on blocking the RedZone site, etc.
• My original post, with further links (and some repeats)
• JIRAs on the subject of privacy – all worthy of your vote and watch):
  • SVC6751 -Make parcel_media_agent_command and similar request user permission
  • SVC 6793 – Establishing an opt-out system to prevent tracking
  • VWR24746 – RedZone security violates ToS, exposes private information & is being misused
  • VWR-24807 – Add abilityto filter cookies into the browser (Viewer 2.x)