Chat bugs?

How can I protect myself from people spying on my conversations, in general chat and private IMs?

Well general chat is very different from IMs - that's public; if you don't want to be heard, don't have conversations in public. IMs are anther matter though but I'm afraid someone else will have to field that question.

IMs are about as trustworthy as the person you are conversing with, barring any weird SL problems.

Regard chat, on the other hand, as completely public. Any scripted object within range can potentially be recording chat, even objects you own if you didn't write the scripts. So don't say it on chat if you don't want the world to read it.

my issue is someone is using a chat bug to read all my im's, is there anyway to stop the person? besides reporting it.

LSL doesn't have a facility to listen to IM, so if anyone is releasing these private conversations it is probably the very people you are talking "privately" with.

First, welcome to the Forums!

As Viktoria said, it is almost certainly the person with whom you're IMing who's leaked the content. The other scenario is that the leak is from your own client machine, or that of your IM partner: you'd want to consider if anyone has physical access to either of these machines. (The installation could even have IM logging turned on, to make it extra convenient for snooping.)

Finally, there's another possibility that's very much more scary: a packet-sniffer or (even worse) a keylogger on the client machine, installed by some malicious program unrelated to SL. Obviously such a program would compromise information a lot more sensitive than in-world IMs.

This is all assuming you're using the official or other open source viewer; if you're running anything third-party that isn't open sourced, it's impossible to know for sure what's going on in there.

The last time I read a thread concerning ways of snooping on IM, there was in fact no way to do it (via an in-world script or object). Items and scripts that were sold presumably to spy on IMs did not actually do that which they were advertised to do.

There have been instances reported of IMs being sent to the wrong person. I'm not aware of reports of IMs being sent to both the right person and someone else.

Have there been reports of group IMs being sent to people not in the group or to the wrong group?

One bug I see occasionally is that a group IM will come in, but the name in the tab will be that of the person who started the group chat. The group info button will still appear for these, so at least there is a way to tell that the tab text is bogus.

There is an old saying, two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.

If your IM's are getting leaked and you did not do it there is only one other way.

On the other hand, if you can not say what you want to say to the persomn you are talking about, then don't say it at all.

Your friends are not your friends.

I was in IM with my sweetie one day and accidentally fondled Philip Linden's breasts via a misfired IM.

That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

Lodge an AR, regardless... it's a breach of privacy and against all the TOS. If it's a friend thats using your IM's against you, they're not worth having as a friend.

If you're using the standard client and someone has managed to "tap" IM's from inworld, I'm sure the Lindens would appreciate being made aware of it. I would also imagine most residents would also appreciate it.