Privacy...people spend so much for homes

Why can't we have privacy? I played a little game called Realm a few years back that had more privacy than SL. All the major RPG's have privacy. Why? No camera that has constraints that can be removed. Does SL have plans to remove this ability or to at least let us start having private "zones" or "instances" our homes and businesses are in so they're only viewable at least inside by those who are inside? I'm not sure if I'm wording this right, but I'm sure most of us have played games which require zoning into a cave or home to be in it....it's a private instance in which items in it are saved in the database. I think it self-deletes when you leave it and only loads when you need to enter it. With all the great minds in SL, surely someone can develop a way for people to have privacy. At present, are there any other ways to have privacy besides buying an island?

I just saw this related post. This is what I'm talking about. It's just not fair that the only option for complete privacy is to buy an island for 1675 usd and pay nearly 300 usd a month....not when there's a post in the knowledge base telling us we can have privacy in a skybox except for the occasional snooper. We have zero privacy because of cameras that can see everything from anywhere in the sim. If we can't be given a way to ban cameras from viewing us, then we need private instances which is nothing new under the sun. They've been around a long long time. I just like my private moments to be private. I don't care if I'm just sharing a kiss, skinnydipping or bathing in the tub with my husband. I don't want to have to feel like there could be eyes on me. It's an eerie feeling.

Read this thread if you're interested in privacy one way or the other:

/13/fc/181052/1.html

the camera is a client side system, the server cannot force where the player is looking, and even if they tried there are tools existing already to override a camera position in any games

How about looking at this the other way round. Instead of trying to control what the onlooker's client can do, how about being able to control what data gets downloaded to his/her client in the first place? Could there be a privacy toggle where if the owner of the parcel toggles it on, only avatars on an authorisation list will receive any data from that parcel? For anyone else using the interface, the parcel and everything on it will have appeared to vanish leaving just bare ground. This toggle should also cause unauthorised avatars to not be able to enter, otherwise their presence could be a little distracting even if they can't see anything

yes its the simples solution although it would definitely break immersion

Hehe if by immersion you mean the sense of being in a real physical world, that was broken for me as soon as I looked up and saw all the junk dangling in the sky!

Agreed, immersion doesn't exist in many places. I posted an item to the Jira (log-in here using your SL log-in) and you can view the entry here. It proposes a zones system whereby you could create a zone which prevents a client from downloading the contents of your home (but not block the walls if you want them to still see the house!), anyone outside the zone will not receive the contents of that zone. Thus you just add some entry restrictions to that zone and no-one can see in unless they're in your allowed list for the zone (therefore being able to get into the zone, and download the contents).

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to let me log in. Is there some sort of probationary period attached to our accounts? I keep not being able to do things other users can do and it always ends up the explanation I haven't been here long enough. Why isn't this documented somewhere then I can go away and not bother logging back in till I can do everything.

I might be a newbie to this site, but I have many years experience programming and using online systems and I believe I already have things to offer without waiting.

Jira's stupid. You can only log in from the main page, anything else doesn't work.

Privacy in SL requires inspecting the land and its surroundings before you buy it, although that usually isn't much of an indicator anyway. This topic has been beaten to death for ages, and the simple answer is that if you want privacy, buy a sim. Yes it's insanely expensive for normal users, but that's the way it is. Next solution is to just, y'know, not need privacy. If you must get a security system, try to get one that's non-invasive (one that doesn't go *BEEP* YOU ARE TRESPASSING ON MS. BIGSHOT'S PRIVATE PARCEL, YOU WILL BE ANNIHILATED IN 10 SECONDS; repeat every second); they tend to ruin the gaming experience of other players who are just innocently passing by.

I've personally learned to not care what other people see, and sometimes go through the effort of making it stuff they can't unsee.

Thank you for your replies. Yes, Fox, the avatar scanner's are great to let us know when someone is near. But a camera with no constraints on distance really makes them worthless. There are ways we can be given privacy from the Lindens if they'll only do it and if it's possible with SL software. I don't know. That's why I'm asking. And if it isn't possible, then I guess it's impossible for residents to develop walls that can't be seen through even with special commands.

An instanced room though is a totally different zone that can be accessed only by people on the access list. So to others, it doesn't even exist, therefore they can't see into it. From what I remember, the Realm developers said they were implementing it not only for privacy but because it saved memory for them, since the instance deletes itself when vacated after a set time....so it would be helpful for that too. But that's not something residents can create.

Making the camera more restrictive would help. Why isn't it restricted now? Is it that necessary for builders and photographers? I've seen it mentioned in photography tutorials. It's a very nice feature in itself, but not when the camera can see through walls.

Buying an island if you can afford it works, but that still doesn't help the camera problem unless you can live on the island alone and not have to have businesses or your own rental business there to help you pay for it. You'd have to be the only resident to have complete privacy and ban everyone from your island, except for the Lindens, of course. So buying an island isn't really a doable solution.

I love that people are thinking about it though. Maybe if enough wanted privacy, something would get done about it. I've been here since July and only just found out about the camera and that was through a post on the SLX forums. I think people should be informed that they have no privacy whatsoever in SL. Everyone doesn't know. But everyone who would use it maliciously does, I'm sure, so why not warn the SL population? I know tons of people who think they have complete privacy in their skyhomes with their orbiters or in their land homes with barriers around them that keep people out of normal camera range.

Anyway the main reason for this post is to ask if there's anything the Lindens or residents can do to help. I better keep it on topic or they'll move it.

That's the correct answer, but not the correct question. This being the Feature Suggestion forum, the question isn't "How do I get privacy" but rather "What changes could be made in SL to increase privacy".

Securing the data sent to the camera seems like the obvious place to start.

Thank you Kidd....I edited the question in the Title line.

Well I tried to edit it....it didn't edit it on the main forum page though.

An option in the land box for landowners to block disabling of camera constraints would be good for now or can't that be done?

Unfortunately now that the client's open-sourced that wouldn't help much, as disabling the feature would be easily done by anyone wanting to ignore it, and they can just distribute they're new version to others.

Vote this one and also this one up and people will work on it.
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-205?ticket=ST-270-ujWbj5GsKRbfaoNq2rCxDL46RA4eeHneOiL-20&ticket=ST-271-pITxpcNqzX652hIA3OmvL3rIJ1YfvyJdbG5-20

Yes! Haravikk's proposal is exactly what I was talking about with the instanced zones. Also, in a private instance you can type in regular chat and not be heard outside the instance, even if someone is standing at your front door.

*edit - I just voted and was disappointed to find only 4 people have voted. Either people don't care about privacy enough or believe they have privacy when they don't.

It's not a matter of not caring enough, but more a matter of near certainty that LL will not implement such a feature.

Remember that this would have to be implemented server-side, because clients cannot be trusted. (And they never could be trusted, even before libsecondlife came along, and long before the client was opened --- any trust was just an illusion.) So any such work would be dependent on LL dev resources, and would not be able to harness community manpower.

But LL simply doesn't have the dev capacity to fix even the many things that are falling apart and that are failing to scale up, let alone to totally redesign the built-in system of unhindered visibility.

And to cap it all, we now know that LL has no interest in defending privacy even minimally, as seen in its immediate capitulation on the recent sexual roleplay issue. It's all heading in the opposite direction --- read Gwyneth Llewelyn's latest analysis if you have any doubt about that.

You'd get my vote if there was any point. But alas there isn't.

We will have to wait for the proper distributed metaverse to appear before we can even think about assurance of privacy. Second Life has withdrawn its candidature for that.

The reason I didn't vote is that I didn't agree with the implementation details, not because I didn't think it was a good idea to have a privacy feature at all!

There are two feature suggestions for privacy in the Jira, and neither of them are suggesting implementing it the way I would prefer. That's the only reason I didn't vote for them.

Why not? Feedback is nice if it helps reveal potential problems. Mine I like because it would allow us to have privacy within our builds, so you could have a house on the ground, but people can't see the contents (because the data isn't sent to them, this isn't that hard to do).
Even if the idea isn't EXACTLY as you'd like, voting for it still helps get attention drawn towards the desire for privacy, and you can always post in comments what needs to be fixed/improved before it is workable.

If you've got an alternative then the Jira is free for anyone to post to.
As for LL not being likely to do it, it's a common and popular request, if they DON'T do anything about it then all they're doing is fostering resentment from a community that keeps asking for action and continually gets none. If someone has to be a member of a big business to get something to happen then LL only pushes community members away, especially if majority opinions that they CAN choose to respect (not like with age-verification which they may not legally have a choice in) are ignored.

I thought I had commented in the Jira??? Didn't my comments show up?

Ah, my apologies in that case, Jira is randomly being incredibly slow for me or not loading at all.