| Annual MUD Safety Announcement [message #50526] |
Thu, 04 February 2010 11:45 |
Xurinos
Messages: 544
Registered: November 1996 |
the Ebb and Flow of Chaos
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Basic MUD safety...
Over the last 13+ years DM has been up, we have encountered all kinds of schemes players use to get an upper hand. Everything I am about to write has been attempted with various degrees of success and failure. Pay heed, and play a safe game.
Never give your password to anyone, period. Even the Immortals do not ever need it. We can log in as any of your characters if we need to.
Make up passwords more complicated than single words and numbers. Studies show that really complicated passwords are hard for people to remember, so we understand why you might want to use 123456 or abcdef. Studies also show that "My dog is longer than 2 seas." is so powerful a password it will not be cracked in more than ten generations. DM supports this kind of password. Pray that other sites out there do, too, unless their IT crowd is full of security noobs.
Do not believe someone is an Immortal unless they have a level above 51 by their name or are a Divine Presence. People will tell you they are Immortals or have Immortal friends in order to gain an advantage. Ignore it. Report it. The only Immortal you should ever trust is one officially recognize by the game itself. No Immortal should be trying to leverage things in their direction by boldly identifying to you their character and what you should do about it; report it.
Avoid sharing characters. If you must, do it with people you absolutely trust.
Be careful about revealing personal information. Commonly used IDs allow people to research you. They will hunt for your myspace/facebook page. They will find you on twitter. One email address later, they will find your linkedin account. Be careful whom you reveal this to.
Never trust email attachments. "From" addresses can be faked. Open what you expect to come. At least doublecheck with the sender. Sorry, the Internet is full of people who want to take advantage of you and your computer.
Be wary of websites people send to you. For example, if someone IMs you, "Hey, check this out! www.freewebsiteplace.com/foo.htm", your first visit to that site should definitely not be with Internet Explorer. IE is still full of holes that Microsoft knows about and has not yet fixed because they consider them "low security". Hackers love that idiocy. So do script-kiddies. I browse worry-free with Firefox + Adblock Plus plugin + NoScript plugin. Firefox also has holes. The plugins will make up for it. Yes, just looking at websites can cause you problems; don't believe otherwise.
Do not open emails as HTML unless you absolutely trust them. People like pictures, fonts, and glitter, but when you consider that the renderer for that HTML is Internet Explorer or some browser that does not block scripts and objects by default, then you will see that this is the same issue as the prior point. In other words, just glancing at an email in this environment CAN cause your computer to be taken over. Do not believe otherwise.
Security is all about trust. These rules of thumb are true not just for Dark Mists but for every game out there. Play safe, and avoid the noid.
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