PA data mining

[mist]

as things stand, it seems highly possible to use data mining tools to keep tabs on what your alliance members do in planetarion without breaching the rules. given the high technical ability available to most of the top alliances it surprises me that noone's produced an IE bar for their members, or a packet sniffer that'll keep an eye on incomming data. This would allow the alliance to know what their member had done, most usefully in terms of exactly what ships they'd launched where and when, the ability to grab any scans they'd done, and the instant parsing of incommings as soon as a page was loaded that showed them.

my question: should this be allowed within the game's rules?

note: the closest rules i can find on this are in section 8, re accessing the game through standard browsers and section 18, most obviously the bit about letting others access your account. however, i don't see anything that would make this plan 'illegal'

[furball]

For reference:

8. You may not use our intellectual property rights contained in the Game or
the websites controlled by or on behalf of Simulation Technologies Limited,
to create or provide any other means through which the Game may be played by
others, such as through server emulators and bots. You may not take any
action which imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our
infrastructure. You may not access the Game or your Account through other
software than standard browsers, wap phones and alike, nor may you use
automated programs / bots / scripts to do so.

18.2. Multiple Accounts / Account Sharing / Support Accounts:
(f) Support Accounts are accounts which are dedicated to undertaking specific
and repeated actions which result in an unfair benefit for a
planet/organisation, where an organisation is defined as an alliance or galaxy.

18.3. Bots
Bots are not permitted to be used to access the game. Bot use is defined as,
but not limited to:
(a) Using browser plug-ins that would make it easier for you to play the
game
(b) Accessing the pages with another program (for example to check if you
are under attack) ¿ see section 8.


Personally I don't think it should be allowed. Section 18.3 (a) partially covers browser plug-ins, and is interpretable as including alliance play. However, it would probably be a good idea to put in some kind of clause stating that the only permissable method of getting data is from the official dumps.

[mist]

hadn't noticed 18.3 a. tho i don't think it really covers it.

[DukePaul]

IE-bar requires the use of IE, right? :-\

In my opinion alliances should be restriced to person-to-person relations, and not automate things like that. Also, it somehow sounds a bit unethical to me, allthough I can't say exactly why.

[Kal]

how would we police/prevent it?

[Forest]

How would u police/prevent VNC?

Fact is, a clever cheat will always profit from this game. Always have, always will.

[mist]

"the same way you police/prevent everything else - baddly"

that asside, i'd imagine that were an alliance to give such a tool to all its members, you'd hear about it.