Privacy Update? Please?

You got me wrong, there'll be green dots, but you won't be able to look up an invisible person's position on the map.

Ranma I think maybe you're misunderstanding the ideas being put forward. You'd still be able to IM someone, just as if they're offline. You just won't know when they get it if they've chosen some privacy for a while. Friends will not be worthless, they'll be more useful. People will feel free to accept friendships from a wider range of people, knowing they have options to have some time when they're not available to all. If it's not useful to you, fair enough, but it won't hurt you any.

Please please please... privacy controls are absolutely necessary.

I hate using 'busy' mode because it's like standing there with my hands over my ears going "LA LA LA I can't HEEEAARR YOUUU!".

Even if it were a simple set of radio buttons or checkbox:

Profile shows online/offline status to: Anyone ( ), Friends Only ( ), No one ( )

Show map location to: Anyone ( ), Friends Only ( ), no one ( )

Accept new IM's from: anyone ( ), Friends only ( ), no one ( )

Auto-reply with: [ I'm at home... drop by if you would like to visit! ]

Stealthed [ ] (invisible, offline, unmappable when over owned land or owned 'group' land)

As it is I sneak in after midnight PST just to tinker in peace. If I dare to step into world over breakfast the flood of IM's is guaranteed to make me late for work.

ANY updates on privacy controls would be *very* welcome.

Hopefully it helps !! I cant agree with you more flipper on the need to sometimes be able to be online without EVERYONE knowing you are. I would even be happy if I still appeared online to my friends list. Its not something I would use to hide from any responsabilities, just something to utalize when you want to make something without being distracted. For any of us that have business' that involve alot of hands on customer support know that if you stopped and answered everything as it came in you would NEVER have time to do ONE single new item. Personally for me when I see my IM light blink I cant ignore it, I feel bad and I answer it right away as long as I am at the computer.. with the showing offline feature it would eliminate that guilt , yay ... lol.

Great even if you can make the removal of the dot to owned land or group owned land a pervert can still buy a small plot of land to grief from. I am still not convienced that they will not be able to do it while over others land. There seems to be a "workaround" to everthing in SL.

You must pardon me but I disagree. I think the Lindens should be working on improvements for the common good instead of a small vocal minority. What improvement will we lose to give the few privacy? Also I still think your proposal will be a griefers delight.

fic.

It's not a small, vocal minority if 175 000 residents want it. You could counter my argument by saying "how do you know 175000 people want it"? And then i would say.. "How do you know they don't?".

I'm guessing most people would enjoy more privacy settings. Unless they're stalkers.

It's always presented as a "small vocal minority" when it's someone else's idea.

Any feature being discussed on the forums is only being discussed by a "small vocal minority", including your favorite features. Any argument made here, including your own, is being made by a small vocal minority. That's because, even if the entire forum agreed on something, it would still be only a "small vocal minority" compared to the SL population. Such is the nature of forums.

Frankly, if you think that the only people that want this or will appreciate it are the ones that are being vocal about it, you either haven't actually asked anyone, or you are being willfully blind.

Here's my proposal:

LL should offer an "Unplugged" mode and an "Unplugged & Busy" mode.

When "Unplugged" is activated:

* You can't be sent IMs. "That resident is currently unplugged" dialog appears.
* You can't recieve objects via profile drops. Same type of dialog is displayed.
* No one can offer you a teleport. Again, same immediate dialog box is given.
* "Unplugged" appears above your avatar (similar to Busy mode).
* "Unplugged" mode persists even after logging out and back in.
* You must manually disable this feature before conditions are reversed.

That's it. Simple. Everything else works the same. You still are visible on the grid map, to local scanners and by the naked eye. People can see you're online. If they want to talk to you, they have to visit you in person. If they want to give you something, they have to drop it directly on your avatar.

When "Unplugged and Busy" is activated:

* Same exact conditions as "Unplugged" with the additon of:
* Local chat is also suppressed.
* Dropping items directly on avatar is not allowed.

This allows you to totally disconnect yourself from everyone (except Lindens).

If you've become popular enough a person for people to feel the need to pester you relentlessly, in "Unplugged" mode they will at least have to do it in person just like in real life. If that isn't enough protection from the stalkeratzi, then go into "Unplugged & Busy" mode and work in silence.

I am asking for the status quo and not change. I am ok with the proposal as long as it is made not to benifit griefers. Filing AR reports is a complete waste of time. I had to go sign for a box at my front door and before I could return was in the process of being cagged! This was on my own property and by a griefer who was not on my property. I got pushed into the next sim by this griefer. Filed a AR and guess what happened? Nothing! Wont make a difference anyway the AV was a new one but there is no way that perp was a newbie.

Suppose I am going to be shouted down. I just wish for you to consider all of the angles when changing something. When evaulating anything you have to consider its possibilities for achieving opposites.

How does this apply to a way to hide your online status from other players? Lindens will still know you're online. You'll still be a visible entity with a name above your head. How does this connect to your example?

If the griefer can go into "stealth" mode it would make it possible for him to evade my defenses. My scanner would not see him, I would not see a dot on the map. Yes I know it is not suppose to do that but changing one iteam in a program can make unexpected changes in other aspects.

So the Lindens can see the griefer, ah your point? They have been next to worthless to me in such events. Why would this be different? Without warning, I could be caged/collared and have some Gorean say I am now their slave! Not that I would consider myself such but it is still bothersome.

Next you will tell me about how locked doors keep griefers out. The Linden Land controls do not work about 40 meters, etc............

My proposal didn't say anything about making someone invisible, Ranma. Are you referring to something else?

No, but how do the scanners on my security script "see" a avatar? This is my point and my main point. If the Lindens rush a new system in without proper tests it could very well happen. Computer programs only follow their instructions. My husband told be about a famous autopilot problem. It was written into the electronic instructions that if the airspeed fell to a low dangerous level to put the nose of the aircraft down no matter what the pilot did. Well both of the pilot tubes failed on a airliner and the stupid thing flew the plane full of people into the ground following its instructions. It probally went past mach on the way down but the computer could not tell the airspeed. The program was meant to save people but it did the opposite it killed them dead.

My point is that a new system of privacy can be rushed into service before testing is complete. Thus my security program will not see the griefer and thus do nothing. What am I suppose to do when confrounting a griefer on my property.

Me. Help there is a griefer on my land and I am under attack.
Live Help. file a AR report
Me. That never does any good! He is putting a collar on me!
Live help. file a live help report

live help has left session

Do you understand what I am trying to say?

Not really Ranma. Nobody is proposing a buggy untested and rushed privacy solution. I think your argument here could be applied to any proposed change to the software, not just this one. If we avoid asking for changes because the programmers might introduce a bug, we get a product that doesn't improve.

I'm not advocating not testing a proposed feature. My proposal would require testing simply because it changes some aspects of the user interface alone.

None the less, it says nothing about making agents invislble to the naked eye or undetectable by sensor scans. In fact, I carefully thought out that proposal before posting it making sure to consider things like script sensors. I clearly said you could still be sensed by sensors.

All I'm proposing is giving residents a new status to supress events/object sent from other agents at distance. That's it.

Using your message as a hook, but this is also to everyone else who's going on about how much more complexity LL should add to this function.
It would be *nice* to be able to appear online for some people and offline for others, but remember... the world is scriptable. There's no reason you couldn't provide another way of knowing you're online for the special person.

You could even give them a "Fade Detector" HUD that displays a happy or a sad face depending on whether you're online or not. Even have it relay messages through XMLRPC/llEmail/llHTTPRequest/whatever... and animate its mouth when you "/22Message-to-special-person" them... and... whee...
Which is the same issue I have. The more complex they try to make it the more likely it'll end up being deferred indefinitely.

now this is why I wis they'd swap "Exchange cards" and "Add friend" on the menus, so the more intrusive option wasn't the obvious one to use. A lot of people don't even know there's a way to exchange cards without becoming "friends".

While I understand your frustration Argent in wanting to use the simplist solution in hopes it not be dropped into DEV_NULL, I'd still rather advocate solving the real problem rather than covering it up. Lying about your online status is not the right solution.

The problem lies with people's ability to send you things when you don't want them to.

It's like having a cell phone and never being able to turn it off when you're watching a movie. My proposal strikes right at the heart of the problem, the ability for someone to interrupt you from a distance.

Nobody's suggesting that the dot should be removed, as far as I can tell. Just that you'd have to physically go there to see who the dot is, even if it's one of your friends.

You're making the same mistake a couple of Lindens have, thinking that the "offline status" should be taken too far.

And if someone has figured out a way to hide their dot, I hope you bug-reported it and contacted the Lindens, because that's a huge security issue right there. You sure they weren't just taking advantage of the "blue blobs" to remain inconspicuous on your mini map?

(blue blobs of course being a flame for another thread)

Frankly, I really don't care how it's done. But there needs to be a way to set yourself "Haven" or the equivalent. Some way to stop people interrupting you.

If this was RL and people kept walking up and started talking at you (generic 'you') when you're in the middle of something, you wouldn't stand for it. Noone would.

And what upsets me about this situation (And telephones in general) is that if you don't answer that phone/IM and deal with that person, they get upset!!

Well, let them get upset! Do we really need tools to avoid having to say "sorry, I'm busy right now, can you come back later?"

What's the difference between "Unplugged" and at the most a minor tweak to the "Busy" mode we already have? The "Busy" mode that people are unhappy enough with that they want "Offline mode"? The "offline" mode is much more like "turning off your cellphone" than this proposal.

I don't want to "not be sent IMs", I just don't want to invite them.

I definitely don't want to "not receive objects". That's been the cause of so much grief and lost content that the fact that you reject objects automatically when you're busy is one of the reasons people want an alternative to Busy.

I don't want anything floating over my avatar.

Look.

If I turn off my cellphone, nobody looking at me can tell I've turned it off. And I can still get pages, and my email still works, and my mailbox still works, and people can still leave stuff for me to pick up at the office. With smarter cellphones I can even get it to let me decide whether the person calling me sees my phone as "off" or not... but in any case they don't get an announcement when I turn my phone off.

This isn't "lying about whether you're online". This is "being online like you're in the world in real life". If you come up to me in RL you can see me, but you can't tell whether I'm "online" to pages or phone calls. That's how things work in RL, and they should work the same way in SL.

Briefly, if so.

They have used the same misunderstanding that you're expressing as a reason not to implement this before. This is a big deal to them, so the chance of them letting that kind of screwup stand is approximately zero.

I just relised a error i made on that image. The Lock icon was for modify rights. the compas one was for maps. but i put the arrows in the wrong places hehe.

Anyway. The icons dont need to be there. I made those to shorten the width of the window. The current friends list has to be expanded to see all the granted rights text. I was hoping we could get the friends list to be more like GAIM the java based multi platform messenger client.

If your worried about the griefers theres plenty of things that already sliped by the lindens that they make use of. like llPushObject. But anyway My idea would not benefit a griefer in their actions since it has absolutly nothing to do with the mini-map green dot indicators. This would only effect people on your friends list using the world map friend locate feature. The mini-map dots will still be there for everyone to see.