How to Escape the OOC Game

Ganymede

I get that, but you're still shifting the goal-posts.

We started with a very specific example, for which you have an opinion I disagree with. There are many non-legal reasons for my disagreement.

The easiest and clearest one is taking your position a little further. If we cannot hold others responsible for our emotional states, then there cannot logically be consequences or repercussions for others' actions that do not cause physical harm, even if those actions are calculated, deliberate, and malicious. If I am solely responsible for my reaction were you to call me a fat, ugly dyke, then I am not justified in any action taken to retaliate against you for that slight.

If we can agree that people can be held responsible for calculated, deliberate, or malicious actions, then we should also agree that the bad actor should be responsible for the resulting harm. If so, then one should recognize the existence of emotional harm because it is just to hold a person accountable for harm they knowingly cause.

The severity of the harm is irrelevant.

Ghost

@faraday said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

The discussion was specifically around stalking/harassment/threats/etc. online

Right. Well there was a point where Gany said emotional injury being fascinating from a certain perspective and that kinda led into what I typed. I wasnt moving the goal posts on stalking/threats but more continuing the "social injury subjectivity blah blah" IToldYouIDidntWannaTalkBoutThis

Ghost

@Ganymede I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you and I think this would be an amazing conversation over tea, cigars, whiskey, chips and salsa, or whatevs BUT...

Some 3 posts back I said I wanna stay out of this one so I'm going to respectfully give you all the floor and not challenge this. My conversational style makes more sense over voice, so I am going to reiterate that I may not explain myself or be able to convey my tone the right way to wade into this one.

Plus, I think this can be sort of an issue with a myriad of personal investment levels, so I'm comfortable letting go.

Sunny

Going to repeat my point:

Telling people that words only have the power they're given is exactly like telling someone who is depressed to go outside.

Ganymede

@Ghost said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

Some 3 posts back I said I wanna stay out of this one so I'm going to respectfully give you all the floor and not challenge this.

Understood.

@Sunny said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

Telling people that words only have the power they're given is exactly like telling someone who is depressed to go outside.

I disagree, but I recognize that in such matters perspective is important.

Sunny

@Ganymede said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

Telling people that words only have the power they're given is exactly like telling someone who is depressed to go outside.

I disagree, but I recognize that in such matters perspective is important.

Yah. My angle on it: It's a helpful reminder for everyone, but doesn't solve any problems or actually help when there's an active issue going on, and in fact makes somebody more upset, having the precise opposite effect that your assistance was attempting.

ETA: It's a lot like 'never in the history of calming down has telling someone to calm down actually helped them to calm down'. It's not necessarily BAD advice (even if walking outside won't help my depression, walking outside will help me in other ways that might make my depression easier, just like it would make it easier for anyone ever dealing with anything because a walk outside is, barring disabilities or snow or other issues, always a good idea for EVERYONE), but it's also not HELPFUL advice.

Ganymede

@Sunny said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

ETA: It's a lot like 'never in the history of calming down has telling someone to calm down actually helped them to calm down'.

Lessons you learn with children.

Alamias

@Ganymede said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

@Sunny said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

ETA: It's a lot like 'never in the history of calming down has telling someone to calm down actually helped them to calm down'.

Lessons you learn with children.

Doubly so with ADHD children, no matter how much you wish a simple phrase would do such a thing.

Ghost

@mietze said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

It is actually super easy to be tracked down by someone who wants to, even if they have very minimal information.

It's just another reason why I'm personally into more anonymity on these games.

I don't want to scare people or sound like Jim Carrey as Fire Marshal Bill pointing out how everything is flammable (ex: mushing using default telnet port instead of SSH), but one thing my infosec training has taught me is that (from a tech/phishing perspective) it's shockingly easy to aggregate little bits of information into a whole.

I'm not gonna tell it out of a bullhorn, though. There's speakers at high school these days who use shock and awe tactics during presentations to show parents just how easy it is to find someone through social media for that particular speech.

faraday

@Ghost said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

I'm not gonna tell it out of a bullhorn, though. There's speakers at high school these days who use shock and awe tactics during presentations to show parents just how easy it is to find someone through social media for that particular speech.

Everything in life is a risk. Want to take this philosophy to extremes? Live with a family member with OCD and anxiety, or participate in hazard analysis on safety-critical engineering devices at work. Fun times! (not)

Anyway, you have to balance the risk of a thing with the rewards of doing it and the consequences of not doing it. Reasonable people will reach different conclusions based on the perceived benefits and risks, but scare tactics help no one.

In fact, over-inflating extremely unlikely events are can lead to societal silliness like kids not being able to play in their own front yards unsupervised these days without somebody calling child protective services.

Kanye Qwest

i keep reading this title as "how to escape the OOC room' and honestly I think that discussion would be more useful to a larger number of people

Auspice

@Kanye-Qwest said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

i keep reading this title as "how to escape the OOC room' and honestly I think that discussion would be more useful to a larger number of people

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mietze

@Ghost it doesn't really matter. That info is out there no matter who you do and don't talk to on a mush. I was stalked by my worst creeper guy only by things that are required for me to do by law, and the legal info databases out there.

Sure you could not go anywhere, belong to any clubs and never be part of a profession far requires state licensing I guess.

I am far more worried about freaks showing up somewhere because I'm a massage therapist than I am mushers.

Quinn

I am consistently surprised how often people give out their real names on games, though. Like, not even just the really young kids that didn't live through the "they could be an axe murderer!" good times of the early internet, older people that should know better giving out links to their real name gmail accounts. It's really easy to be lulled into a false sense of security when you're with a gaming group you like, but until you know people for a long, long, long time it's still really risky. Someone I know participated in a secret santa on an online forum and had a guy show up at her house. A lot. Restraining order time a lot. After that rules got changed and only the person running it and the person you were assigned to got your address. BUT STILL! It's so, so risky.

Sunny

@Quinn

I use my RL name in my email and other places about the hobby. While I've had bad experiences with folks online, I have had far, far, far, far worse experiences with people who knew me in meat space first. Yes, bad things happen, crazy things happen, people do terrible things. Someone who thinks NOT sharing their email is actually keeping them safe? I'm pretty sure they're actually the one with the false sense of security.

I use Facebook. I mean, at all. I use it. It has my name, my town, and my picture on it. I am way, way, way, way, way more at risk just existing on FB than I am using my name in my email and sharing that with people. This is 2019. Google knows what I ate for dinner yesterday, even though I don't remember. Making a personal choice to be particularly private? I can understand that, absolutely.

Refusing to understand/acknowledge why someone might make a different choice, or saying that someone making a different choice is engaging in risky behavior does not take into consideration the realities of the digital world that we live in these days.

Ghost

@Sunny said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

I am way, way, way, way, way more at risk just existing on FB than I am using my name in my email and sharing that with people.

This is absolutely not accurate, FYI. I'm in IT and do a lot of infosec stuff, so take that as a qualifier if you will, but this is entirely not true.

Facebook For starters, any personal information you share over have had collected by Facebook is their property to distribute, but is also protected by high-security data centers and IT teams who are regularly audited for security standards.

Mush? Everything you type is subject to data sniffing/interception(non-SSH telnet), potentially stored on a database that gets stolen by lame people who steal code, and is very rarely scrubbed. There are no existing standards in mushing for which information can be kept and for how long, nor are there any real guarantees what the owners of said mush space to with your IP/loggable information.

Facebook: You have control of outward facing information shared with the public. You have the ability to whitelist people who can view this content by approval or denial of friend requests. You can remove people's access to view your information after they've once had access it.

Mush: Making a login to this forum is free. If this forum is insecure or Ark's password is easy to crack even via a rainbow table, I would then have access to IP information that could be backtraced to physical locations. You and many other mushers have listed who they are playing and where, and I think some 98% of these games are using default telnet, so if I apply sniffing to data coming out telnet on said IPs that I've stolen? Voila. I could then monitor your mush traffic. To make things worse, mushers (and this forum) are very susceptible to social engineering attacks. If you think about it, with sone acting ability and a little time, some of the people's need for RL human contact could be leveraged to build false flag friendships that could be used to socially engineer information about the target or (since mushers like to gossip) other potential targets (which means you dont need to be compromised. Other people who have been compromised could share your information either to others or a malicious attacker directly or via sniffing default telnet port.

There is no identity validation in this hobby, but a clever hacker could easily use this insecure as shit hobby as a listening point for data mining.

Not scolding or whatever, but once you were like "I'm way safer on Facebook" I didn't feel right not speaking up due diligence-wise to let you know for your own safety, that this is absolutely not true.

Mushing is hackable as shit.

Sunny

@Ghost

I am also in IT.

You don't know how I have FB setup, what I'm doing with it, or whether I'm an average user / careful.

ETA: Thanks for the explanation about my own RL profession, though!

ETA2: Every bit of 'social engineering' mentioned there could easily apply to FB in addition to mushing. I did not say 'existing on MSB', I said 'sharing my email with my name in it' and 'sharing my email with my name in it' is not more dangerous on an everyday risk level than 'existing on Facebook with my name, town, and picture listed'.

Ghost

@Sunny Sure, but if youre in IT you also then would know that telnet is a ridiculously dangerous security risk and that the amount of money a multimillion (billion?) dollar corporate empire sinks into data security standards is vastly less insecure than information you share on this forum or in this hobby.

Doesn't matter how your FB is set up. It's in their interest to protect the data that you have given them. They will fight for you to protect your PII. The only thing serving as a benefit to mushing's security is obscurity. Security Through Obscurity is a paper thin shield, but Facebook is probably thousands of times more likely to be the target of an attack. So...there's that.

Given the likelihood, however, that PenDes has a reputation amongst the hush-hush network of people who want a place to explore pedophilia, chances are it's a known entity. If it's using default telnet and not SSH, that place is potentially a treasure trove of blackmail loot.

The malicious deep web world is fucked up and clever. Never underestimate them.

Sunny

@Ghost

Again, 'sharing my email with my name in it' and 'existing on facebook' are the things being compared here. Yes, absolutely, hackers are scary and telnet is bad. I'm gonna mush though, so -- hey, actually, that makes a really good point.

My IP address, which is actually as scary or MORE scary than my email, is not at all secure on login into a mush, because HACKERS.

So you're at more of a risk just logging in than you are by sharing your email with your name on it.

ETA: "If you're in IT" -- I am. I just said that.

Roz

I am pretty damn particular with my email/RL name because I am literally the only person with it. Both first and last name are very uncommon, so the combination is entirely unique. The idea of sharing that casually is totally unnerving to me just because of that.