Private Chatting

hello,

We are setting up an ecommerce system where users after they buys products have to fill in delivery information and billing address information by modes of chat (address question and answer etc..

The problem is that if there is more than 1 person others get the chat messages of eachother in their screen. This is with filling in information unacceptable.

Is there a user friendly way inside second life to keep chat conversations private per user with out others seeing it?

Thanks

Have the individual chat on a channel? For instance tell person A to input the information on Channel 56785 and Person B to input the info on Channel 346767.

It's by no means secure, someone could have a listening device on the channel, but chances are pretty low, especially if you assign each user a random channel at the time they are to enter the info. In case you don't know how to chat on a channel, you would proceed what you type like this: '/56785 Test'

Considering you are dealing with people's real life information, it would probably be best to conduct this activity on a outside website, using Secure HTTP. SL just isn't geared for handling anything sensitive or secure.

Either that, or you could have customers fill out a notecard and send it back to you with the important information. Much more private than an open chat line!

Why not use IM? (?_?)

I think he wants something automated. Not everyone wants to sit in SL 24 hours a day reading notecards or handling IMs.

I have a few scripts which are supposed to read notecards and pull information out of them... couldn't he just send each customer a note card, tell them to fill out the pertinant info, drop it into an object where the script lives, and have it automate that way? Sorry if I'm being dense... just an idea.

It's not a bad idea. It would have to be carefully implemented to account for formatting errors, bad spelling, and to recover if someone tried spamming it with 1000 fake notecards. But a viable solution.