Possibility to hide online status?

Could it be made possible the online status could be hidden if a person wishes to stay "invisible" ? The lack of this feature reduces privacy significantly, it's impossible to avoid some people since they can easily see if you are online or not.
Ofcourse, you can mute such people. But that doesn't change the fact they SEE you're there and just refuse to answer. It would be a lot more discreet to just tick a box and go hiding, without the need to explain your silence.
I know I would have use for this, does anyone else agree...? There's a voting about it, at http://secondlife.com/vote/index.php?get_id=855 , it's a simple thing and should be everyone's right.

Yeah I'd like this too, I frequently sign in for only a brief period to check something I'm working on, or make last-minute changes to it. But when I do I might get a ton of messages from people and I feel I need to explain to them that I'm only on briefly.

There is no privacy in SL. If you want privacy, send postcards.

This feature has been requested in some form or at least once a month since SL went to public release. The "workaround" favored by many players is to have an "secret" alternate account that allows them to work without much interruption. Given this, I cannot imagine a single reason why Linden Lab would decline to add the most requested feature unless they were simply interested in boosting player counts, and we know that that isn't one of their motivations.

Another successful strategy to keep other players away is to be coarse and obnoxious. Siggy keeps trying this one, but it doesn't seem to be working for him.

I know there's no privacy in the sense of being able to completely shut yourself out... But this is not a privacy matter, actually.... It's about being able to play your game without the NEED to be rude to people. Yes I also know about the alt things... And the hassle when someone's SUSPECTS you're an alt, or have an alt :| Oh the drama....and that's exactly why I'd wish to play my second life in peace. As myself, as I intended. And not check who's online before deciding wether to log in this time or not.

SL has this feature, It's called making an alt account.

I just want to have a peaceful time wandering, and exploring ALONE.
I CAN NEVER DO THAT.
I turned out to be quite popular and always have people tracking me and appearing without advice.
Sometimes I enjoy that but sometimes I just want to be ALONE and enjoy Second Life itself.
If we could have an optional invisible status for some friends it would be great. I really need it!
I don't want to delete anybody. I love most of my friends and don't want them to know I've erased them from my friend's list. That could really hurt any friend's heart.
But sometimes one just needs to be alone.

Hi Flavian. I've already tried that. I called it my 3rd life.
And definitely won't do that again for a huge list of reasons.
Here you have a few of them:
1 - Alternate accounts are not free
2 - In your 3rd life YOU are not YOU anymore
3 - No money
4 - No clothes
5 - No lands
6 - No posessions
7 - If you meet anybody they all treat you like a newbie
8 - If you discover anything interesting, whatever it is, transferring things from your 3rd life to your 2nd life could be a pain in the ass. Believe me.
And the list goes on and on...
So, conclusion: an alternate account is NOT a solution for this.
Even more, it's something I wouldn't recommend to do.
We NEED to have an invisibility option in our 2nd lifes

Zabalero, one thing I have found effective (because I have so polite friends - lol) is to put in your profile that when you are in busy mode, you don't want to be distuburbed, and ask people to please respect that. Put something similar in your busy message, and go into busy mode when wandering around alone. If you want to talk to people you randomly meet while exploring, just make sure you have your history window open so you can have an conversation with them.

For the friends of yours who DO track you down using the map, try to tell them in a polite way that is something you hate, and tell them to please stop doing that. Belive me, most will respect your wish. If not, they aren't worth your friendship.

Good luck

There's something I don't understand. If there's no such thing as invisibility mode, how come some people have the word "unknown" show up in their profiles under 'Online:'? These same people, when I look for them in Find, are listed as not being online. It's only the profile that has the word "unknown" for their status.

Because LL have no clue what consistency is? The original thought was that you shouldn't be able to tell the online status of some random stranger from their profile - which I agree with. You should need to be friends or have a calling card for that. But then they let you look up anyone in 'find' and determine their online status anyway.

So now we have the ludicrous situation where you go to find, which even has an online/offline search filter, find the person you want, complete with their online status, but if you pull up their profile from there, it's like "oh no, we can't tell you that! we'll put 'unknown' to protect their privacy!".

Just one of a number of inconsistencies LL know about but won't do anything about.

Here's another gem - offtopic with regard to this, but shows the blatent inconsistency and disregard for privacy that LL has - if you batch upload your textures, it kindly fills in the description field with the full local path from which the image was uploaded. But ONLY on batch uploads. And where do most people store images, just because they're guided to by Windows? Their My Documents folder. Which is under their User logon. Which is very often their full, real name. It's been like that for two years. It's been reported to LL dozens of times. It's been brought personally to Philips attention by people who have had their real life info revealed through this and he even agreed it's wrong.

So while LL acknowledge that they have some really fucked up 'features', they don't care enough to do something about it.

Take anything LL says about taking privacy seriously with a very large pinch of salt. It's just bullshit made to make you feel better while they avoid the issue.

You know, I simply do not follow LL's logic. They defer or simply don't implement features that would truly improve the universe. It makes me wonder if they actually participate in the world at all.

Totally agree with you, Storma! There are bugs I've reported over and over and over since the 1.6 days that they aren't even looking at. Instead they come up with new 'features' (read 'bugs'). My theory is they do this to show 'progress' to investors and stock holders.

I have hope, foot shadows got put under the feet after TWO YEARS. So who knows what else is possible?

Here's another fave of mine... when you IM someone who's not on, it says:


It should say:


I've seen "Unknown" for a status if someone hasn't logged in yet after a major update.

I liken hiding Online Status to turning off a cellphone. I enjoy getting IMs, but there's times when I want to LOCALIZE and just enjoy what's around me, in the local vicinity. That is part of the benefit of SL for me, to enjoy geography in proximity and the company of avatars without having to keep getting pinged. And then, when I want, I can turn it back on.