i think you are the one suffering from stupidity. you are an addict who is afraid someone is taking your candy in an online game. if game rules are broken there aren't any "real life laws" kicking in. the government couldn't care less if some kids stole the data of other kids in an online game. how silly are you?

oh yeah and stop being an asshole and accusing players you don't like. as if seiger were so stupid to buy an account from a known vet and then approach the devs. they coulda easily checked if it was subbed on someone else before. you never think before you write do you?

Woah I thought you were kidding there when you were chatting on 100, Bojan. You REALLY are accusing TGFT of breaking real life laws. That is beyond hilarious. If you are only trolling you have my heartfelt respect. If you are serious however, I really pity you.

Anyway, beware everyone! TGFT is watching you and you are never safe in space. We may just program a plugin that /explodes all your ships in one second or something crazy. BEWARE! [/irony]

Clarence - Don't waste your time here mate. Common sense is not a thing that Bojan is well in.

GS Eula is a binding legal document required for all online games by US Laws.

Enough said.

Bojan, the plug does not violate anything you quoted in the eula.

Hmm, bojan, if you are so upset by This :

9. You may not use any third party software to modify the Software to change Game play. You may not create, facilitate, host, link to or provide any other means through which the Game may be played by others, such as through server emulators. You may not take any action which imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure. You may not buy, sell or auction (or host or facilitate the ability to allow others to buy, sell or auction) any Game characters, items, coin or copyrighted material.

Then you could kick estrian / ap / archeron etc out of your guild SKV, since his TGFT alt clearly violated it.

Put up or shut up time ....

Ecka, read this quote from Lisas post in this thread:

"TGFT requires alt separation. Therefore if someone in TGFT has a pirate alt etc., then we need to make sure that is not abused. Any alts would not have access to the TGFT data.

Data regarding alts is restricted to only the CO, and LT's. That way we can maintain alt separation."

It clearly states that no alts have access to 'sensitive' data your plug-in collects so abuse is clearly performed by the TGFT inner sanctum group of players only.
This also nullifies your previous "Chewbacca defense" statement.

@bojan... read through each sentence in the eula and ask yourself if the plug in does it. Since the answer is NO to each sentence of the eula, the plug in does not violate it. It's a simple reading comprehension exercise. The plug in doesn't modify the software, doesn't change game play, doesn't enable game to be played by others or emulated, doesn't cause large load on infrastructure, etc.... So, test complete, it does not violate the eula. Move on.

@kbireta.

It is my belief that TGFT utilities plug-in affects the gameplay by providing unfair advantage and gain for a select few players over the rest of VO player base.
i.e. TGFT plug-in modifies the Software to change Game play.

However, I will let GS be the judge of that and accept their decision on this matter.

Bojan, the software provided by Guild Software is not modified at all by the plug in. I suspect you will not be happy with the decision. All plugins enhance our experience to the benefit of those who use them or they would not be used. There may be plugins that are privately available with features you may only be able to dream about ;).

Bojan: I don't really see a fire here.

The EULA gives guidelines and allows enforceability of situations that deviate too far from those guidelines. The level of deviation is up to us, and basically dependent on the given situation that emerges.

Plugins are something that we leave pretty "open" with the notion that we don't explicitly support or deny them, but rather will make decisions based on how people actually use them. Bots are kind of similar (although even less supported). If something emerges that is really a detriment, then I'll consider acting against it.

But again, at this point, I don't yet see anything to get worked up about. If that changes in the future, people are welcome to bring it to my attention again.

updated TGFT_Utilities available to download at voupr.com

1.81 -> 1.85

o_0

Thanks for the quick 'ruling' on this Incarnate.

I will drop the matter but just to be on the safe side if I understand this correctly...

I can make a spyware plug-in and distribute it to the whole VO player base and effectively use said player base as my own spies to deliver information to me about any players location in VO in real time, ships, items players have in stations, all of their alternate characters, their real IP addresses, etc, etc, etc?

This is pretty awesome, thanks Incarnate.

bojan, read what rin summarized! It does not do all that. it's like a server based version of trade assistant. It uses items for price data only, no quantities. All server based plugins need ip addresses! This is a very helpful plugin for those who 'choose' use it. I could have used this kind of data when I was new.

Quote from: Lisa50469
Data regarding alts is restricted to only the CO, and LT's. That way we can maintain alt separation.

Quote from: davejohn
Then you could kick estrian / ap / archeron etc out of your guild SKV, since his TGFT alt clearly violated it.

You two just contradicted each other within a few hours. First you claim to maintain alt seperation, yet your commander resorts to unfounded alt calling? Funny how this works. One rule for when it suits TGFT, no rules all other times.

Given these replies, TGFT has shown its true colours in that they crave nothing but every possible advantage, even if it means lying and cheating to get this. I used to hold TGFT in a higher favour, however lately I see they're nothing but scum who need cleansing.

lol, Kierky, you've felt that way for awhile!!! They are just trolling you. You read lau, look at the code!

Within the lua scripts in the plugin's "main.lua" file, there resides a section called altfinder that points to http://www.tgft.org/vendetta/altfinder.php.

On the surface, we have no way of knowing what the altfinder does with what data since the file is restricted. However, I suggest that it collects IP addresses and uses them with the 5 digit passcode that TGFT Utils uses for it's login credentials -perhaps this is why the user has no control over the passcode- for comparative analysis.

They clearly had some difficulties with bad logins at one time because there exists a lisadenied.txt file which anyone's browser can point to at http://www.tgft.org/vendetta/lisadenied.txt. (not currently a restricted file).

In this file are character names with IP addresses and 5-digit passcodes. I used an earlier version of this file, which was much longer, to do some rudimentary analysis as a proof of concept and was able to match several IP addresses with character names -the 5-digit passcode was enough to rule out a coincidence and an alt was established.

Is this the way the TGFT altfinder works? Maybe. Maybe not. But it could -i used their data for that purpose. To her credit, Lisa has since locked down that directory -all one needed to do was knock off the filename to get a director listing of the php files within. And she must have fixed the issue with the problematic logins because the lisadenied.txt file no longer updates.

Still, the issue it raises is one of ethics and morality.

TGFT "markets" this plugin as a helper app for traders outside of TGFT. And, true, it does offer them something. Perhaps they even get to share spots. But they aren't looking at any last seen players that are TGFT since that php is locked. And all their IPs and passcodes are potentially logged to a plugin that those with the right level of access can use to type "altfinder" in order to locate alternate players.

Lisa and Ecka *claim* that this is only used to protect TGFT, and maybe that's true. But I wouldn't trust them. They have he ability to locate alts for anyone running that plugin simply by comparison that is easily automated and reported with a chron job if they have the data collecting somewhere.

TGFT Utils is a honey pot. It is designed to lure players into a 'good thing' but for purely selfish reasons by TGFT. And this is not only unethical, it raises questions of morality.

At least it ain't against the rules.

If you used it, you're a sucker. Not a bad thing since we're all entitled to be suckers once.
If you continue to use it you're a fool.

bojansplash wrote: "I can make a spyware plug-in and distribute it to the whole VO player base and effectively use said player base as my own spies to deliver information to me about any players location in VO in real time, ships, items players have in stations, all of their alternate characters, their real IP addresses, etc, etc, etc?"

biretak wrote: "bojan, read what rin summarized! It does not do all that."

@KB: Which parts doesn't it do? Granted, bojan didn't clearly state that it only knows what items you have, not how many of each, and he's using kind of a hyperbolic tone, but he didn't say any falsehoods.

@bojan: Those things you listed, yes. Those are fine, particularly when the nature of the plugin makes it obvious that these things are being disclosed (although it would be more courteous if the plugin had a disclaimer pop up the first time it's used that explains what it collects for those who are less savvy, and provides a way to opt out triggering a logout so that you can shut the game down and remove the plugin if you don't want to expose that data).

Things that the devs would not tolerate would be if you found a way of using plugins to scrape people's account passwords or email addresses, or if you found a hole in the plugin sandbox that let you read arbitrary data off people's harddrives outside the game directory. Those are the sorts of things you could make legitimate complaints about violating the rules, being illegal, etc.

So Estrogen is against TGFT now?

Wow Lisa, how much did I tell you so, you burned every bridge with RED and BR1 for that guy and now he's your enemy and he's threatening your relationship with Itan as well.

You can't have your diplomatic cake and eat it too, but I guess ya'll knew that, you just don't really care.

Thanks for the clarification Rin.

By tolerating this plug-in Incarnate has opened a very interesting loophole so, I guess, we will be seeing more of brand new 'must have - extremely helpful' ethically and morally despicable exploit plug-ins in the near future.

I think SkinWalker summarized this pretty well:

"TGFT Utils is a honey pot. It is designed to lure players into a 'good thing' but for purely selfish reasons by TGFT. And this is not only unethical, it raises questions of morality. "

Indeed, TGFT is a group of ethically and morally bankrupt bottom dwellers who will stop at nothing to gain unfair advantage over the rest of players.