Discussion on Privacy in SL: Are you being watched?

Second Life protects our RL identity and allows us a certain amount of ability to hide what we do in SL.

However in SL anyone can read our profile without our knowledge, most properties are wide open to intrusion, and there are detectives for hire.

In a poll conducted at my place of the last few weeks (with 29 respondents), 49% felt the amount of privacy in Second Life was "about right." But 41% felt there was "too little" and 10% felt there was "too much."

Let's discuss the issue of privacy in SL.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but the default permissions on Unix files back in the day was "look but don't touch (modify)" which reflected a rather different spirit than is coming into fahsion now. Yes, you could easily change a file to be unreadable by others, but the default engendered a spirit.

There are plenty of alternatives to SL for interaction that are infinitely more private. SL was a world without privacy of any sort at the start (with the exception that eavesdropping devices were prohibited) and has become increasingly more insular over time.

As one who doesn't do anything in game that I would have any hesitation about having the world see, I may be the wrong person to answer this. As there is no real privacy afforded by SL, there are two approaches to simulating it: detection and prevention. There are plenty of devices that will tell you if someone is in chat or camera range which allows you to stop doing whatever you would have someone not observe. Indeed I've set up skyboxes with such detectors not so that I could stop, just so I could know if someone was trying to listen in or was just flying by. Why would I care if someone was hovering near my skybox listening in? Simply because eavesdropping is impolite; wanna come join my chat or just listen in? Fine, just be courteous enough to show yourself.

I think this is far preferable to the current hodge-podge of ban-lines, bounce scripts, utterly penetrable "locked" doors and other annoying but ineffective measures. They make the world far less friendly and don't provide privacy against the truly determined.

Then again, RL is filling up with gated communities and household alarm systems, and car alarms that are uniformly ignored. So perhaps I'm way behind the times. Or maybe I don't watch enough fearmongering news that makes me believe that people are inherently nasty contrary to the actual incidence of nastiness. And for those who might claim that I've led too sheltered a life, I've been mugged and had my home burgled whilst asleep and it still hasn't changed my beliefs.

Just an update on my inworld poll:

"Zoning restrictions should be adopted in SL to reduce the spread of billboards."
YES=12
NO=4
and counting.......