ISP Status

Second Life

2010/Aug/24 16:59 UTC

Malicious Viewers and Our Third-Party Viewer Policy

<div class='jive-rendered-content'>Late last week, we discovered a denial-of-service attack that was being served through the widely distributed Emerald third-party viewer. This is in direct violation of <a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://secondlife.com/corporate/tpv.php">our third-party viewer policy</a> (part 2, section d, paragraph iii).We have removed Emerald from the <a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://viewerdirectory.secondlife.com/">list of third-party viewers</a>, and are now in touch with the Emerald team to discuss what can happen next. We did this to do our best to protect the safety and security of Second Life users. We will not tolerate a viewer that includes malicious code, nor will we tolerate development teams with a history of violating users’ trust or disrupting their lives.We take privacy, safety, and security very seriously, and we will act to the best of our abilities to protect it. We have not yet disabled logins via the Emerald viewer, but will do so if we feel the software and the team behind it is not able to meet the standards we’ve set. While Emerald is currently the focus of our attention because of what happened recently, all third-party viewers are held to the same standard, and must comply with the third-party viewer policy.The third-party viewer directory is designed to be largely self-policing, but we take our responsibility to act very seriously when problems come to our attention. Our goal is that you should feel comfortable using many different viewers in accessing Second Life. While there are always risks involved in using a third-party viewer, we are doing what we can to minimize those, and we encourage and deeply appreciate third-party development. Our new <a class="jive-link-blog-small" href="http://blogs.secondlife.com/community/technology/blog/2010/08/16/project-snowstorm-our-new-open-development-program">Snowstorm project</a> is an example -- allowing third-party developers to deliver more directly and rapidly to the Second Life viewer.If you have been using the Emerald viewer, for now we would encourage you to consider either one of the <a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.secondlife.com/download">Linden Lab viewers</a>, or an alternative <a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://viewerdirectory.secondlife.com/">third-party viewer</a>.</div><div class="feedflare">

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