IRSeek

Pierce · none Joined: 09 Feb 2004 Posts: 47

I dont know if this has been tallked about on here, i did a search with google and got no results.

Have you heard of a site called www.irseek.com ?

It was featured on http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/30/will-irseek-have-a-chilling-effect-on-irc-chat/

I have a major issue with this as they were indexing a network i am apart of without any prior information.

How do you feel about an idea like this?

PIerce

PingBad · Guru Joined: 05 Feb 2005 Posts: 2075 Location: New Zealand

sounds like ChatScan - and IRC networks of that day made sure it didn't last long.

Jason · Posted: Dec 01, 2007 6:43pm Post subject:

yeah, this isn't anything new. We have seen chatscan, irciver, etc.

Here's a discussion on one of the past incarnations:

http://searchirc.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=468&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Launching a bot, logging the data, then making it searchable isn't a big deal. I guess the same could be said about this site :) But being long term IRC users ourselves, we know this kind of thing will anger IRC users.

The only way to run a service such as this, is to make it opt in. That's exactly why submitting a network to SearchIRC requires an email address from the networks' domain - so we know someone from the network is requesting it.

nenolod · Idler Joined: 23 Jan 2004 Posts: 335 Location: A box!

Some advice for those who want to block them:

* they use TOR (so if you're blocking TOR, they won't be able to get in)
* they use a fairly large proxychain network running mostly on spanish machines

Blocking TOR and having strong open proxy protection should do the trick, at any rate, irseek hasn't been logging my network in a while Smile

Mary · SearchIRC Admin Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 692

I just read this post by TechCrunch user Jesse:

December 2nd, 2007 at 2:07 am

As of about 2 hours ago the website is deactivated. They want to work at the issues together with the community. Freenode will put an official statement in their blog, I guess: http://blog.freenode.net

Mary · SearchIRC Admin Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 692

I didn't want to confuse my comments with the above post.

I think IRSeeK went off on what *they* thought was a good idea and found it was not universally accepted. This may have been a surprise to everyone but our SearchIRC members. We've BTDT and have the posts about ChatScan, Google, and IRChiver to prove it.

I want to tell you why I am against IRC logging sites.

When ChatScan was first announced, I visited their site. Each page had snippets of conversations going on in IRC channels. You could browse through them all and join any that looked interesting.

Hmm... much like attending a party, I could walk around and stop wherever I wanted to join the conversation.

My eyes scanned down the page until I saw something really interesting. I forget the details but the user's story was juicy. I looked at the title of the channel. It was a Depression support channel. The user was suicidal because she could not think of another way out of her desperate situation. The user typed out her phone number so the chanop could call her and get her the help she needed. There it was... all of that, laid out on the ChatScan website for my viewing pleasure.

There are many people who would enjoy watching an IRC version of Candid Camera. But even Camera Camera had their victims sign a release. Think if that was your mom, your sister, your wife laying bare the family's problems and phone number without a clue they were being posted to a website.

I quickly joined the channel and messaged both the chanop and a network admin to advise them they were being logged. The channel had the usual idlers, and while the user and chanop thought the conversation would go no further than the channel, there amongst the regular users was the ChatScan bot broadcasting every word.

My next step was to notify our members so you all could take whatever actions you felt necessary to keep this from happening on your network.

SearchIRC regularly gets messages from people who want to use information about networks, that we have gathered, for their own projects. The answer is, you will NEVER get cooperation from SearchIRC when you plan to SPY on users in any way. Such violations of privacy are wrong and offensive.

IMO, IRSeeK proved themselves untrustworthy when they broke that BIG rule right out of the gate. IRSeeK ALREADY has hundreds of thousands of YOUR conversations logged and archived. They ALREADY have 2000 bots planted in channels without your permission.

Now that the word BAN is being tossed around, they want to come back and "work with" the IRC community. Ya wanna know what my personal opinion is about that?

PingBad · Guru Joined: 05 Feb 2005 Posts: 2075 Location: New Zealand

I myself am vehemently against uninvited channel logging-and-broadcast bots - esp when the operators show no decency and cannot respect a network's wishes (if memory serves me, ChatScan loved evading bans). Problem is, most people who do these kinds of projects know about IRC, but they have never really looked into the more detailed sides of it (beyond RFCs 1459 and 208x) - the user interaction sides...

Mary · SearchIRC Admin Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 692

IRSeeK has been slashdotted:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/02/1515247

There's a wiki up about IRSeeK on: http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/IRSeeK-en

Stefano · Eleet Joined: 03 Apr 2005 Posts: 528 Location: Beirut

hmmm interesting