Cool VL Viewer forum

I know with the introduction of the new Filter MIME Probes preference, I can revert to previous behavior via the checkbox. I am curious though, if I should be seeing those probes (and subsequent popups) for a neighbor's TV while in my Linden Home's parcel AND disallowing media playing from outside of the parcel I'm in. Their TV is very 'chatty' and seems to cycle through a number of requests/pages, each of them doing a probe.

I'm adding a log, in case there is anything interesting in there. Thanks.

Yes, this is normal.

Other viewers simply silently contact servers for each and every MoaP object rezzed, to perform the MIME probe (which allows to determine in advance what plugin will be needed to play the media, should you ever play it).

This is a source of information leak and a potential way to log your IP and try and guess what avatars alts belong to you, or track you. This is BAD. This is the reason why I implemented this new MIME probe filtering feature, but yes, it causes alerts "spam" each time you log in or arrive in a new place.

For your home sim, a solution is to blacklist you neighbours' MoaP objects (derender them, then use Lua to recover the list of derendered objects UUIDs, and automatically restore that list on login).

Hmm..I have tried derendering them (and I do have a 'perma-derender' feature coded). Maybe I didn't find all his chatty objects. I'll cam around a bit more. I know the TV is 'new' and 'huge' so hard to miss but there might be other media objects I didn't locate.

Another possibility it to white-list the server for those TVs (this is usually youtube.com, and the TV user or scripter cannot recover your data from those servers, so it is safe to white-list them): white-listed servers are probed without spawning an alert.

Yeah, I tried that too for a while, but there are often more than YouTube. I figured it was 'safe' to let YTs play if I'm in the parcel. I'll just adjust my expectations on this. I'd rather get the popup than just randomly let those probes proceed in the background. IMO, it's a good addition because I rarely just let any old media play.

I revised the code yet again, and I think you will like the result.

Here is what changed for next release:

• I added a check for muted objects in the media filter. I.e. when an object is muted, all the media it bears are also automatically filtered out (without a permission dialog being presented, and regardless of the white-listed media): muting objects will therefore allow to silence any related media filter dialog, and will work as soon as you log in (the mute list is received very early during the login process and before any object data arrives, meaning before media would start and be probed).
• When the media is not permitted to play as per the media location restrictions (e.g. not on same parcel, etc), and the media server is not already white-listed, then the MIME probe is automatically skipped without a permission dialog being shown (and if the server is white-listed, the probe will happen without asking you either).
• I ensured that skipped media probes would not prevent the corresponding media to play should you manually load it or move where its object is located later on (thus fulfilling the location restriction). In particular, the media HUD panel reload button now re-enables and fires a MIME probe on such "skipped" probe media.

Wow, those sound awesome and seem like they align with my original (though naive) thoughts on how the probes might work with respect to various mutes/preferences. I appreciate that.