Friday, February 25, 2011

More important info on Redzone

First, let me clear something up.  While Redzone (and others like it) can no longer reveal alts without consent, they can still collect your IP address into their database without consent.  This means you still need to take precautions by disabling your media.  We won a major battle against an invasion of our privacy, however we still have to continue our fight until we've won the war.


Today on the Jira, Soft Linden made some very important comments: (bolded text done so by me)


"If you find someone whose alts were listed based on someone else giving consent, I'd urge them to file an AR. If that is happening, I think support should know. On the future plans thing, there are a few proposals in JIRA. I'd put watches on those if you want to show interest in viewer enhancements."


"The ARs that got some products taken down (off the marketplace) were based on disclosing alts without consent. If you can demonstrate that anyone but the single database owner has access to alt lists without appropriate, explicit consent, please file an AR for that. I wish I were qualified to interpret or comment on the other specific ToS sections, but I know I'd get a swat if I tried publicly. Filing ARs may help here, and I'll gladly continue helping peers understand what you're saying."


"Thanks for all the feedback, everybody. I wanted to give an update since a lot of you have been asking.


Many of you have already noticed that the Disclosure section of the Community Standards page was updated. That was done to more explicitly state that alts are protected from disclosure.  We also removed some items from the Marketplace for violations of the Terms of Service and Community Standards, and we notified the merchants that they needed to fix the violations before they could re-list these items. This is the support team's normal practice for handling reports that a listing violates the Terms of Service or Community Standards.  


Once re-listed, support still needs your ongoing help to spot potential violations, as products can change from day to day.


If you find that any merchant's product is not in compliance, or that it's been re-listed or recirculated in-world without being made compliant, please file an abuse report about the product, even if you filed against a previous version. Include a specific explanation of what you believe is a violation, and ideally select and report the object at issue in case it behaves differently than what's in the Marketplace.  Before reporting, make sure you have first-hand knowledge of the issue. Support can best react if you explain specific steps to reproduce or confirm a violation."


The short version is this and very important- Redzone can not reveal alts without consent of all the linked avatars to be revealed.  For example:  Say Suzy gives consent for her alts to be revealed, the database spits out the names of Darla, Fred, and Sam.  Even though Suzy gave consent, they still can't reveal Darla, Fred, and Sam's link to Suzy without their consent as well.  In this case, Redzone would need the consent of all four avatars in question. 


This means anytime alts are revealed without the explicit consent of every avatar named, the person doing the scan, zFire, and Redzone itself should be AR'd.  


Soft then went onto say if a product on the Marketplace violates the Community Standards change, it should also be reported.


Soft Linden's comments today prove that Linden Lab is watching the situation, and Redzone, very closely.  It's now up to the rest of us to AR the stupid out of Redzone, it's users, and zFire whenever they break the rules.  

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