Regarding Calls and Conferences - I'm a little scared.

Ok, here's the thing. I was just on SL and I was standing in a room. There were 4 of us in the room, but only 3 of us were in a private conference. So the three of us are talking and we start to suspect that, somehow, the 4th person can hear us. So one of us says (on voice, in the private conference) "Say popcorn if you can hear us", and I say (on voice, in the private conference) "If she says popcorn I'm leaving." And then she, the 4th person who isn't in the conference says, in text "Popcorn, and please don't leave." So how in the world is this possible? Like I said in the title, I'm a little scared.

One of the other people in the private conference is messing with you...

edit: lol.. great name, btw.

The other people in the call were people that I can (or thought I could) trust 100%, so I'd really prefer that that were not the case. Is there any other possibility?

In SL there is NO (I'll say that again, NO!) privacy. If you are engaged in a chat (voice, text, whatever) that is of a really private nature it would be best to use some other form of communications.........Yahoo, ICQ, MSN. But not SL.

4th person could be an alt of one of the others.

4th person and one of the others could use SL from the same room, within earshot of each other.

One of the 3 could have plugged their voice chat into an audio stream broadcaster and the 4th person was listening to the stream.

Someone told me that scripts exist that can:

A. Listen to private calls.
B. Read private IM's.
C. Detected voice from people who don't have their talk trigger on.

How many of those are true? And if any of those are true, why would LL allow any of that?

Scripts do exist that can "hear" and repeat open chat. But those scripts have to be placed in some object that is within normal chat range (20 meters) of whoever it is doing the chatting. It can repeat and be sent via email to whoever it is that is "listening". But I do not believe that can be done in any private call or IM.........not without somehow intercepting that chat through LL's servers. On the voice from people with their mic button closed that is a definite no. I'm assuming you are talking about having SL running with voice enabled and you turn around and yell at your husband to get you a coke and your push to talk button is not pushed. That would be like someone hearing you on your phone when the phone is in it's cradle or off........it cannot happen.

But, since you are apparently very concerned about people maybe eavesdropping on you, I would suggest you do not say anything that you would not say to the world while logged into SL. SL is not geared for privacy in any way. Remember that and you should be fine.

The average VIOP is not secure and can be intercepted realtively easy. I doubt the 4th person has the technology or will, to eaves drop on a SL voice conference. If you want some level of privacy, try using something like teamspeak, where you control who is in the conferencing 'room' with you, however, you cannot stop anyone rebroadcasting that chat from within the room to anyone outside.

For business secure type VIOP, there are service providers out there, but again, no 100% assurances to prevent rebroadcasting.

I would suggest someone (or more) of these people are messing with your head.