Can Somebody Hear My IM's?

They do not. They can listen to open chat, and some can scan other chat channels. (Chat channel: typing /xxxxxxx where the x's are some number will chat on a channel that people won't see unless they have a chat scanner. Channels other than 0 (open chat) are normally used to send commands to objects, like "/99 bling off". Chat channels are NOT the same as IMs.

As far as I know, none of the third party viewers, including Restrained Life, can send your IMs to another person either...although Restrained Life will allow your dominant to keep you from sending or receiving IMs, or chat or notecards.

I have repeatedly challenged people who claim to be able to intercept IMs to do so with mine. Send me a log of my IMs, along with a detailed description of how you did it, and I will pay you L$10,000. Nobody's taken me up on that offer. And believe me, some of my IMs are real interesting, and would be real embarrassing to see published.

One possible scenario that hasn't been mentioned...a key logger installed on the hacked person's computer. This requires hacking outside of SL, however.

/me checks your IM's... yes they would be embarassing.

There is no known way to listen in on someone's IM's in any normal fashion. Some of the alternate viewers do have this capacity, and a custom viewer could do nearly anything the programmer is clever enough to code in. But such a viewer would only be able to transmitt IM's that it recieved. So if you are running a normal viewer then it could be the person you are talking too..

LL's implementation of the IM's is more like Instant Messenger than chat. The conversations are relayed through a special server. That server does mess up sometimes and either sent the message to the wrong client, or just not send it at all.

All that being said I suppose that such a server could be hacked via a special client, but the odds of that are unlikely..

I agree with the others here that this was more than likely either the person you were talking to let the other person know what was being said, they are the same person or know each other.. Or... it was just an odd coincidence.

I will also add that at one of the clubs I used to dance at the owner had two dancer alts that she told no one about. She created them just to see what her dancers were up to.. Basicly spies.. I quit there when I figured it out.

Lizzy

and even that would only capture one half of an IM exchange

Rock

Nice try, O Prince...but I don't pay up unless you send me the logs.

I'll shoot them over when I'm done reading them.

That wasn't me. Someone hijacked my account. yeah, hijacked my account that's it.

Elanthius, the Restrained Life viewer has never, does not and will never forward your IMs to anybody, at least while I'm in charge. The official Cool Viewer does not either.

And to address other people concerns, the standard SL viewer does not either. And any scripted object pretending to be able to read someone's IMs is a scam.

Marine

I meant, of course, that there was some feature that would forward your IMs to people by choice. I've never actually used it but it just seemed like the kind of feature it would have.

No, no. This viewer is made to enhance the fun, not to compromise ones personal info.

Marine