Gossip's PM log - will it be deleted?

[LabRat]

There is a thread currently on these forums regarding Scafativ and Toomass, I am sure you all know the one.

 

This is not about that issue, I am posting a specific question as I can see from a mile away that the other thread will be locked in short order.

 

This thread is nothing to do with the whole toomass/scafativ issue - please don't spam this thread about that - stick to the other thread with toomass flames please.

 

I ask outright to Scafativ - will gossip's past PM log(s) be deleted and logging of PMs be discontinued immediately or not?

 

There is a clear risk of abuse of trust, and the only person able to prevent it happening in this way is Scafativ.

 

The fact that any threat was made to reveal confidential information is a clear violation of the trusted role gossip has, and that situation should be remedied immediately.

 

If scafativ is unwilling to remove the bot PM logs I will happily knock together an offline PM bot with a clear guarantee of no logging of PMs (apart from PMs that have yet to be transmitted to the intended recipient, I need those to ensure inter-session operability and system crash recovery - once transmitted to the intended recipient the record will be overwritten with random garbage and deleted)

 

Please do not post here to continue the Scafativ/Toomass thread - their personal argument is not the reason for this thread.

[Ghrae]

If this is a question to scafativ... shouldn't it have been sent via Forum PM?

[LabRat]

Not at all, the question is one that should be answered in public as it concerns all players using gossip's PM forwarding feature.

[Ornitorrinco]

too much fuss over such unimportant thing.....

[WizzKidd]

Well, Charn also has this feature which has only allowed guild members to send message to this point. Anyone can read messages sent to them via charn.

 

Charn also does not log the pm's publically. They are part of a debug log which is only reviewed when someone attempts to scam the bot. So, if need be.. I would be happy to open this feature to the public.

[Scorpius]

i dont think that privacy is unimportant.

I think it was a good step of LabRat to open this thread.

I personally am shocked that such private infos get not deleted from gossip after a while.

 

But also think that there is noone who says you HAVE to use gossip. I would appreciate it when the logs

of gossip would be deleted sometimes anyway.

 

I for myself will not use her again till this happens.

just my opinion

 

 

Greetings,

 

Fabi

[LabRat]

Ornitorrinco

 

This thread involves trust. It does not involve you. Stay out of it.

[darkguy]

Or perhaps a function of deleting old messages etc. can be added and by the player's choice he can activate it...

 

Chimeran Wolf

[ville-v]

Or perhaps a function of deleting old messages etc. can be added and by the player's choice he can activate it...

Or it is activated by default and player can deactivate it if s/he happens to want?

[darkguy]

That's a good idea.

 

Chimeran Wolf

Edited September 5, 2006 by Chimeran Wolf

[Aislinn]

First, just letting you all know that the second this turns into a flame war, it's getting locked.

 

Second, my 2 cents is I would prefer the messages be logged. I would want proof available should it be needed for whatever reason it would be needed for.

Also I highly question why anybody would send highly personal sensitive information through this medium.

 

I also saw this come up in the other thread which will be locked in a second, EL personal messages ingame are not logged anywhere so don't go dragging comments like that into this.

 

Edit: I do agree that somebody with the responsibility of running a bot like this should be above the sort of temper tantrum that provoked his threat. However I do think scafativ is a good person and will probably learn a huge lesson from this.

 

Edit2: I would like more information in idiot terms please, from Labrat on what he suggested in the other thread. What exactly is that and how does it work?

[darkguy]

I also saw this come up in the other thread which will be locked in a second

 

About time...

[ville-v]

I also saw this come up in the other thread which will be locked in a second

 

About time...

Yes, it is locked but I don't understand why it was needed to tell it in this topic

[Ornitorrinco]

Ornitorrinco

 

This thread involves trust. It does not involve you. Stay out of it.

How come? I have used Gossip too... So, you better stay out of it as well... ;p

 

Anyway, it's unimportant... it's not about privacy, it's about moaning because you didn't realize you shouldn't send important messages over untrusted medium. And if he says he's going to delete all the logs, what's to prove he will really do it? Why will you trust him now, and not previously? Doesn't make sense...

 

If you have such sensitive info to send, code it, encrypt it, send over SSH directly to the recipient, because not even your e-mail provider can be trusted.

[darkguy]

First, just letting you all know that the second this turns into a flame war, it's getting locked.

I also saw this come up in the other thread which will be locked in a second, EL personal messages ingame are not logged anywhere so don't go dragging comments like that into this.

 

 

Yes, it is locked but I don't understand why it was needed to tell it in this topic

 

It is to tell us not to turn this into a flame war. And if we do that then this topic will be locked as well.

[Zaer]

WHAT!?!? this thread has no flaming in it!!

FLAME FLAME FLAME... much better

 

on a serious note, i think that by using a bot that someone else has worked for and made for public use, you accept that anything you use the bot for can be used by the creator of the bot. If you have issues about privacy dont use the bot, it is simple.

whether logs are kept or not is up to the discretion of the owner of the bot, he/she put in the work for it and so controls it.

 

hmm how long till this turns into a flame thread, i give it 30 mins

[LabRat]

EL personal messages ingame are not logged anywhere so don't go dragging comments like that into this.

That is what I was referring to - the fact that Radu himself doesn't want PMs logged.

 

The only person that should be able to reply to this thread is the one person that has not - Scafativ. Let's not pre-empt his response.

 

I never wanted a flame war in this thread, I wanted (and still want) a straight answer for a straight question.

 

Feel free to lock this topic as it is now, and if Scafativ wishes to reply on a new thread it is but a second's work to clip the two threads together.

[Aislinn]

Actually none of my comments were directed at you

[LabRat]

On the other (locked) thread, I posted something vague about MD5. I would like to clarify exactly what MD5 is, and how it would help the current situation:

 

MD5 is a form of validation to confirm that a message has been unaltered since it was first MD5'd:

 

As an example:

"The cat sat on the hat"

 

The MD5 for that message is d6b15a28b2ad45693c935758208c6f92

 

If I change even one character I will get a different result, and I know that the message has been altered:

"The cat sat in the hat"

The MD5 for that message is 02d62f9951ee705e46134b1929da750e - and at a glance you can see the two checksums are different.

 

There is no known way apart from brute force attacks to generate a message with the same MD5 as another message, and brute forcing would take a very long time (we are talking centuries here rather than seconds).

 

A message can not be recovered from its MD5 value, making it perfect for things like passwords in database files such as forums - and indeed it is highly likely that your forum password is stored as an MD5 hash (confirmation from a forum admin would be great).

 

In the current situation, saving a log of the MD5 of any sent messages would allow the admin of the bot to verify any claim of abuse without being empowered to inspect the other messages at any time (he won't be able to see the messages unless you forward the messages to him to compare MD5 values).

 

I suggested using

MD5(lowercase(sender_name.' '.recipient_name.' '.message))

as the client can (and does if so desired) convert ALL CAPITAL MESSAGES to something a little easier on the eye, and MD5("CAT") will not give the same result as MD5("cat"), but MD5(lowercase("CAT")) will give the same result as MD5(lowercase("cat")).

 

'lowercase' is any letter such as a b c etc, and 'uppercase' is A B C etc.

 

If you need more clarification, feel free to PM me and I will happily explain anything you are unclear on.

[TooMass]

As i can see my original(now locked post) about gossip worth it. i only wanted to show what can happen. And also as i can see labrat asked scafativ couple times 1 simple question and there is still no answer....now every1 can make his own opinion on this bot gossip. some1 can still trust it and use and some1 maybe opened their eyes and wont use gossip anymore. That's why i made my post. not because of my stats or my messages. i have nothing to shame for but if this bot says "your data r 100% safe" it should do it.now many of u can see it's not 100% insurance. and because i'm not training anymore and at 99% i will never do again i'm gonna reveal my current stats to proof that when i posted the chatlog with scafativ and showed my stats by myself has no role in this case.and if i want every1 to see my stats i will do it)and done it) from my own will and not because some1 is threating me with this!!! I completaly lost trust in this bot and every other bot which uses same services and i think i'm not the only one here

Edited September 5, 2006 by TooMass

[Placid]

A message can not be recovered from its MD5 value, making it perfect for things like passwords in database files such as forums - and indeed it is highly likely that your forum password is stored as an MD5 hash (confirmation from a forum admin would be great).

Looking at the forum's configuration, I would say MD5 is used for encrypting passwords.

[Ghrae]

LabRat - Interesting solution.

 

Unfortunately I find it highly flawed.

 

Example:

Player A uses MessengerBot and sends a message to Player B: "I know where you live dickhead"

 

Using your method, and assuming that you got the correct spelling of both players (damn how I hate how little things always creep up like zero vs O etc)... you would find a match. Guilty as charged right? Down with the infidel. Let's hang him.

 

But wait... one line? Hmm... do you know the context of the conversation? Perhaps this was the last line of a joke? Perhaps it was a quote of what someone else said. Perhaps Player B was sending other messages to instigate it.

 

And perhaps Player A can't pull up his chat logs to copy you the messages that he received first from Player B because he can't find his chat log (please don't laugh, you'd be surprised how many players don't know where their chat logs are).

[Earl]

I do not send sensitive information via gossip however that doesn't stop other people sending things that could cause potential embarrassment to me as the recipient if it became known. Not talking anything juicy, more like evil schemes and stupid schemes too.

[LabRat]

Ghrae - how can you not have the correct names for both recipient and sender?

 

Sender - sent the pm to the bot - there is the sender name

Recipient - is in the message eg /bot TELL labrat hello

 

The bot is coded to check the players online page for the recipient name before sending, so it will go to the correct person.

 

If the person declaring abuse can't find the chatlog.txt file then there is no evidence at that time, but there will be the second the player learns (or is told) how.

 

The solution offered is perfectly acceptable, and extremely difficult to beat.

 

If there is a dispute regarding context, then to be perfectly honest unless the entire message history was sent both ways through the bot it is just one player's word against another as chatlogs and screenshots are easily manipulated. That is not a flaw in my solution, but a flaw in human nature that without some kind of line-by-line checksum on the chatlog (MD5 sounds a good idea there) won't be remedied in software, or by a mod without taking sides instead of being completely neutral.

[scafativ]

There is a thread currently on these forums regarding Scafativ and Toomass, I am sure you all know the one.

 

This is not about that issue, I am posting a specific question as I can see from a mile away that the other thread will be locked in short order.

 

I ask outright to Scafativ - will gossip's past PM log(s) be deleted and logging of PMs be discontinued immediately or not?

 

 

Ok- I'm at work, and I don't have time atm, to read this not-exactly brief thread. Here's a couple of points, until I get the chance to read up and answer properly.

 

The only reason I have the comands stored in the database is, that was a condition of Ent's of getting the bot approved in the first place. There was a concern about abuse, and I was told I had to keep complete logs.

 

I agree that in three cases, privacy is a valid concern. They are 1) TELL commands (messages), 2) ADMIRE commands (because they are "anonymous"), and 3) MATCHMEs.

 

Once a match is made, I do not currently save the information, because my interpretation of Ent's constraints suggested that I don't need to. TooMass' stats were lingering, because he hadn't been matched. I guess that he was too busy Cutlassing naked players, then threatening their guilds, to get matched up.

 

That leaves ADMIRE and TELL. Presuming that I can get permission from Ent, I will immediately desist from logging ADMIREs. That's easy to do, and the right thing, and not a problem, because admires happen immediately, regardless of whether the admired is online or not.

 

The TELL is a bit trickier- They have to be stored until they are delivered. That's the whole point of offline messaging, right? Again, with Ent's permission, I will immediately stop logging them, and, as things are now, once they're delivered, they're destroyed. Not having given it too much thought, I don't see how encryption can help w/o a client process- gossip needs to be able to deliver an unencripted message right?

 

I want to again apologize to the 3000+ gossip users for my poor judgement yesterday- I did try to extort TooMass, but only after he tried to extort me by threatening to hunt my entire guild down- a non-PK guild. No gossip data has ever been shared with anyone (except, in TooMass' case, with himself), nor will it ever be. The data is in a database, and I don't have a convenient way to even get at it. Gossip's been used over 70,000 times without an issue before now.

 

LabRat- again, I haven't had the chance to read this thread, but if you have a thought on how to encrypt messages, I'm more than open to them. It is my preference to not have access to the mesasges.

 

Oh, and TooMass- I hope I run into you on a pk map sometime when I have a pocket full of ELEs. I'd like to see how many chim you can handle.

 

scaf

Edited September 5, 2006 by scafativ