Privacy, Chat and Cameras

I notice that although you can't get into locked homes, sometimes you can scan them
by using your camera.

I know as I tried this with my place.

And chat is detectable through walls.

I bet someone has fixed this and I missed the comment in the forum [often the case]

Is there some kind of workaround so residents can have more privacy?

Wolfie! [Wolfie Rankin]

Actually, its rather simple to get into a locked house. I'm not sure if its considered an exploit or not, considering you are using the software as it was intended, just in a creative way. But I wont say what it is here.

Rez a prim, sit on it, and move it through the door?

Right click on a chair that is inside the house and select "sit"?

Probably get your own land, that is more than 20m (chat range) on both sides, then put up ban lines.

Select the map, Goto your house, double click it, and you're inside!

There is only one way to actually get real privacy in SL. Spend $1250 USD and buy a private island, pay $195 USD to maintain it each and every month, then hide it from the rest of SL, making it 'private'. Then no one outside your personal sim can know what you are doing. You can still invite people to join you there, but no one can TP there unless you make them a resident of your private sim.

For anything else, all the locked doors, ban lines and security scripts in SL can't keep a determined person from at least looking at what you're up to.

Walls do not stop sound, and do not stop intruding cameras.

Locked doors don't prevent some idiot-simple exploits to gain entry. (Though a good security orb or a 'white-list' ban on a parcel can keep someone from etering, or can forcibly eject them or teleport them home if they trespass).

If your parcel isn't so huge it's almost a whole sim by itself, people can still listen or look from outside your parcel borders, and you can't do a thing to stop them.

We live in glass houses. Only private islands have privacy.

aye. its all very important to remember one simple lession:

a king who lived in a two-story grass hut when all others around him lived in one-story abodes. The king was cruel, and forced his subjects to build him a copper throne. When he got tired of it, he made them build him a silver throne and stored the copper one on the second floor. His rear end quickly stopped enjoying the silver throne, so he commissioned a gold throne and put the silver one next to the first throne, upstairs. Once gold began to bore him, he flogged his people until they built him a platinum one. Finally, as he sat in his platinum throne, his second floor collapsed, and the first three thrones -- gold, silver and copper -- crashed down on his head, killing him. Which just goes to show that those who live in grass houses shouldn't stow thrones.

All the security you could ever need can be activated by pressing CTRL Q.

Lewis

True only if all the friends you ever care about spending private time with are the ones who live in your own home town. Or if you just don't have any friends. Personally, I have friends in quite a few countries, and SL is one of the only places we could ever hope to 'meet'. So your simplistic retort doesn't work, for us.

I don't get why people really need "privacy" here so much anyway. It's weird to me.

Because to some of us, SL is an extension of our real life friendships, and the only place where we can have any sort of intimacy with people who live far away. You wouldn't want to have the walls of your bedroom removed while you were making love to your spouse, lover, or even the hooker from down the street, would you? Likewise, some people do use SL to simulate intimate moments that they would rather not have intruded upon.

It isn't all about sex, either. If I am designing a sim for a client, and we are discussing design detail's, looking at scale models and texture prototypes, sharing sketches of sim layout plans, and discussing the financial details of a project that my customer is going to spend thousands of US Dollars to build, I certainly don't want someone stealing the idea and rushing out to make a half-assed version of our plans, and possibly crippling the financial viability of the proposed sim.

Same goes for new clothing designs and other product designs that are not yet ready to market, but which need to exist in-world as I get the seams just right, and do other final detailing. For example, I am sometimes called upon to make custom textures for products that are not yet being marketed. Someone spying on a private meeting about such products could steal product ideas or designs.

In either of those cases, a lack of privacy could be financially devistating to the project.

I don't get why people balk at the idea of wanting better privacy controls. Why can't people see it's not all about wanting to be totally alone.

What I think would be a cool build would be a house done as the setting for a murder mystery. One with sliding book cases to reveal hidden rooms or revolving fireplaces to reveal secret passages. It could be built now just that you can't stop people from panning their camera to find the secrets so it's somewhat pointless.

I'm watching you...

Not only that, but you could clearly hear almost anything going on anywhere in the house, just by standing in a central location. No way for someone to quietly plot something in a back room, or for a 'victim' to be trapped in a sound-proofed basement dungeon... etc. . Likewise the edit tools make it far too easy to detect hidden doors, false panels, and other such things.

Then most of the time, you must be supremely bored, as I don't often do anything that does require privacy. And when I do, that is when I'll activate a security orb and keep you at a great distance.

I saw you. I know what you did..last summer...

Privacy will lag. Requires more programming. We already are telling LL we want bug fixes, not more features!

Privacy will come eventually. LL wants SL to become a commercially acceptable platform and for this to happen, and for corporate enterprises to see SL as an extension of their RL activities, privacy must come. It will not be acceptable to use a whole private sim for conferences and meetings where confidential matters are discussed.

What is needed:

Cameras unable to be placed outside of the enclosed space an avatar is in. This already seems to be partly effected, when i sit with my back against a wall, the camera will usually move forward to my side of the wall. But I am talking here of testing for totally enclosed spaces and not letting the camera out of that space.

Chat should be attenuated by factors such as the thickness and composition of walls, and the length of the shortest available path from the source to the observer.



This will not happen anytime soon. But until it happens, businesses will not take SL seriously as a platform.

OR- if it's a "private" conversation there's this thing in SL called IM. Totally amazing!!! No one can hear that conversation!

IM is only between two people. Bring on improved groups in 1.12!

Actually..you can IM lottsa folks at once. Just throw there names into a folder under your calling cards and right click on it and choose "IM everybody in folder" or something like that.

You can also, of course, IM groups.