Is Privacy Possible?

Cameras can see into houses. But is there no way to make a prim thick enough, or no texture opaque enough, or no other trick to block peoples' cameras from entering your house and rotating all over the place?

make a 61m thick wall

There is no trick to block peoples' cameras from entering your house because your house is inside their graphics memory. Should they disconnect from the network, your house would still be in their graphics memory with full details. Try it. Unplug the network and take a walk in my house. My house is in your PC's memory. That is a key point to understand privacy in SL: you are indeed sending your house all over the network, to all Second Life users.

Forget textures and opacity. They are just switchable decoration and may not load. For the same reason, doors and windows may not be doors and windows, signs may not be signs. And the camera's range is not 60m, it's 256m when draw distance is pushed over. Yes, you can see (and act) 256 meters away from your avatar. You barely need to move your avatar to play SL. I'm often chatting with friends, my avatar being sited near them but acting on an object far away.

This alone makes SL very different to RL, and transposition of concepts such a "privacy" or "property" must be done with care if you want to play the RL game. "Privacy" is most denying social interaction, mostly chat, ie avatar's presence in a 20m radius. Unfortunately, if you own a 256m2 plot, you are never out of chat range. You need 1600 (2*20^2).

[Êdit] Max draw distance is 512, not 256. Thanks for pointing the mistake.

I frequently push my draw distance to 512, so even 256 is not the limit

I can be working in my skybox way up high, and still be ejecting greifers on the ground anywhere on the island where I work.

Given the obvious value of privacy--just to be able to create something without being observed, to mention one use--couldn't the Lindens provide a texture that specifically blocks the camera? It's fantastic to me that you can't dig down below land, or go high enough above it, to be free from prying eyes. I've heard that skyboxes can be used for privacy, but I guess somebody can teleport themselves up there, if not fly?

No, creating a texture to do this would not be the answer. It would be the camera control that needs to be adapted so that the swinging camera cannot penetrate solid objects and this is just not going to happen. Your best bet would be to either buy a massive plot of land or a private island or the most practical option would be to live at 700m above the ground. Not allot of people venture that high but it's a perfect solution.

Or talk in IMs and accept that if you're going to put your avatar on risque animations, that someone may see it.

Or buy a private island and have an access list.

Thank you all for your insights. But I wanted to ask Porky: Why is 700m a magic number? They would have to fiddle around with their transport object's Z axis, but they could get up to you and take a look, right?

I understand you may feel uncomfortable with Second Life's lack of privacy. The question here is : should Second Life adapt to Real life or the player adapt to Second Life? We are given a set of abilities, some of them better tant IRL (flying, teleporting, seeing and acting remotely), some worse (privacy...). If you want SL to be RL-like, be consistent : Ask Linden to remove flying, remove teleporting, fix camera at avatar's location. That's way simple.

As for skyboxes : yes, we can fly to skyboxes. Newbies won't. But I doubt. A fly-assist was one of the first object I was given when entering Second Life. Skyboxes are a bit more difficult to find. But as lag grows, there are more and more public areas in the sky : sky-malls, sky-clubs, sky-casinos. Another way to get some kind of privacy is closed boxes. Again, avatars can enter closed boxes. But this require some skills and you may expect that residents able to enter closed boxes are also able to refrain to do such.

Get over it. You are not Britney Spears. Whatever your 'toon' is doing, and with whom, is not worth .02 seconds of my time to find out.

I believe the height limit is about 750 or 760 metres, you cant go above that. But you are right, anyone could just sit on a prim and put it at a height of 700 metres and they would arrive in your living room or close enought to spy. You just dont get a lot of people moving about at that height which is why I suggested it. To be honest, unless you are willing to buy your own sim and restrict access or buy a massive plot on the main grid then there is no absolute privacy is SL if someone wants to spy on you then they generally can.

hmmm I think 700m or there abouts max with no support. Pretty sure the tallest building which use to be in Whitestone accross the way from me went well over though it no longer stands.

Lol. Not even Britney Spears is worth .02 seconds of my time to find out.

Nastasja, you should understand that entering a dematerialized existence may be frightening to humans. Yes we stay humans, but we agree to spend part of our live inside of a computer. INSIDE OF A COMPUTER ! That's not browsing the web or sending emails. That's projecting ourselves into a digital universe. By doing so, we acknowledge that living inside a computer may be terribly different from living in Albuquerque, Tokio or Maubeuge. Should it be the same, Second Life would instantly loose any interest.

The best possible privacy in SL is to get your own island and don't let others in.

Other than that, all you can do is reduce the likelihood of peeping. If you're worried about a specific threat (someone you suspect of peeping at you personally, or who you want to hide your activity from), there's pretty much no hope.

If you're worried about curious passers by, the best bet is a high skybox, with a scanner to detect anyone within normal camera ranges and alert you.

The 700m limit is a limit on 'physical' objects. Most objects aren't physical, so this isn't terribly significant.

There's a limit on unassisted flight, but anyone can get a free jet pack or 'flight feather' or other assist objects to go higher. I believe these are physical, so they can't get over the 700m limit. However, there are other ways to lift oneself. The easiest is to create a box, sit on it, and edit the position z-axis value.

There is no privacy in SL. Period. Doors, walls, locks... it's all window dressing, and easily bypassed.

The height limit for normal building and rezzing of objects is 768 meters. Most skyboxes are somewhere betwen 500 and 750 meters up, because that is high enough that most casual fliers won't stumble across them, and you can't usually see it from the ground.

Yet I've had same-day newbies invade a skybox at 700 M up. Believe me, anyone can, no matter where you are. (I'm certain that 'newbie' was an intentional griefer, who had done such stunts with other disposable alts before. No legitimate same-day newbie would have found me that fast, or been dressed and armed the way that lamebrain was.)

For most of us, the best privacy we can aford is to buy a small parcel, put a skybox way up high, and add a security orb that teleports unwanted intrudes back to their home location if they linger for more than 10 seconds. Not perfect, and they can still float nearby and harrass you, but it keeps most trouble away.

The only real privacy is to buy your own island sim, and only allow access to your invited guests. It costs $1650 USD plus another $295 USD per month to buy privacy in Second Life.

You could get some Island land, dig a 100m hole, place a teleporting security system at the top with the range set to 96m. As long as you stay in the bottom of the hole, you have at least a 50% chance of having some privacy.