Verena Vuckovic

"Its none of your business to know what other people do with their personal settings." It most certainly IS my business if that person claims to be a friend ! If they want their online status setting to be none of my business....they are free to leave my friends list any time, and don't let the door hit their ass on the way out.

"i agree monti......for a long time now i used that as a "friend confirmer"....and if a so called friend wants to hide if they are online, especially when there are the avenues you already mention such a the busy message where you can tell you friend you not feeling like being social today, or away status, i conclude that several senario's could be evident, one of those being they donet want you to know they are online., or have someone else to hide from. that being the case they are no person whom i would want to be associated with and have then de friended them. if i cannot see this? how do i know that there are friends out there? just because they hold my hand when i have a little cry?, even evil people do this, or because they hang with me sometimes?, even evil people do this..........if you cannot trust you "friends" then what kind of social media is this and can we really call that social?" I agree totally, and couldn't have put it better myself. What the hell is this person doing on one's friends list if they have unchecked the 'see online status' flag and left it that way ? The default status, which one starts with on friending someone, is that both have the flag set to allow the other to see status. Insofar as that was the basis of the start of the friendship.....why should one party be allowed to change that without the other ever knowing ? And yes, one of the uses for being able to see that flag was that one could SEE when someone had witheld their online status for a long time and could thus make an informed decision about whether they should actually be on one's friends list at all.

"Thats exactly the kind of drama people do not want to be involved with . hence you have no ability to conger up false thoughts I see what you are saying but no one needs to know the users settings for another user except for your own settings.... Privacy" On the contrary......one of the surest ways of knowing that it's time to boot someone from the friends list has been knowing that while you have your flag set to allow them to see your status........you can SEE that they are never doing likewise for you. I'm not talking about people who uncheck the flag for 5 minutes, but people who uncheck it and leave it that way. It's nothing to do with 'drama'.....its about establishing who one's friends really are !

"That ability was disabled thru the server software to protect users privacy because it was being abused by another 3rd party viewer" Well.....no....it really isn't the same thing. The 3rd party software was elsewhere directly overiding the privacy of online status. That is something different. The flag I am talking about does not tell you the users online status. What the flag tells ( or told ) you is not the user status but whether the user has allowed you to see that status. The point being that the DEFALT setting for friends is that showing online status is checked. That is the flag status when a person first becomes a friend. Why, then, should a so-called friend be allowed to alter that without one knowing ? It is the lack of reciprocality in all this that I object to. I'd be happy if the friend unchecking their flag also unchecked my flag for them. What I am NOT happy with is a situation where I carry on displaying my own status OBLIVIOUS to the fact that the so-called friend has unchecked theirs.

"Now that see the true online status has become impossible all has become a big black hole" This is really not quite the same as whether one can directly see online status. If a friend has uncheked the flag, then regardless of whether one can see that they have unchecked it......one will not know their online status if they have indeed unchecked it. So being able to see the status of the checked or unchecked flag was never itself an ability to bypass online status privacy. But knowing the status of that flag DOES tell you that a friend is hiding their online status.....even if you don't know what that status is. That flag should be displayed.....because any person ought to be able to think ' Hmm...what kind of a friend is it who has their online status permanently hidden from me ?? '

"My opinion is it's against the spirit of the ToS if not the letter of it" That is precisely my point. It may not be a direct violation of TOS......but it is most certainly designed to circumvent it. The point is this :- Imagine if these groups were not relatively small but contained tens of thousands of members. Those unwilling to 'verify' would find themselves marginalised. Instead of privacy being the norm, peer pressure would ensure that revealing RL info was the norm. That is the whole purpose of such groups. They are effectively an attempt to to build up sufficient members that TOS becomes irrelevant because there's an unspoken pressure to comply.

Just downloaded the latest viewer.......and I notice something that has been there for years is missing. Friends list, in addition to allowing one to check the flag to show online status, always used to show the status of that same flag for the friend themselves. In other words, if a friend had uncheked your ability to see when they were online, you would know they had done so. The flag indicator for this no longer exists in recent viewer updates. To my mind this is 'privacy' gone nuts. It strikes me as crazy that one can be broadcasting one's own online status to 'friends' who have no intention of reciprocating.......and no longer even be aware that they are not reciprocating !

"they are not talking about my gender or yours..they are talking about the peoples that want to join.." And why would anyone....er....'want' to join other than that they feel pressured to by the very insinuations that the group is set up to spread ? "when you find a TOS violation then i'll agree ..but there isn't one here..so i'm fine with it hehehe" It most certainly is a violation of TOS to spread or imply anything about a person's RL either by direct statement or by implication. If one sets up a group whose entire implication is ' anyone who does NOT join this group is an XXX in RL'.......then you are by definition making a statement about the RL status of non members. It's quite clear that the entire purpose of such groups is to circumvent TOS. The whole idea of such groups is that with a large enough membership a majority of people can be peer pressured into providing RL info. That is what these groups are all about.

"I don't see them trying to force it on anyone " Ah....well in that case you really need to look into the group 'Verified RL Blind As A Bat'

"It is crazy to even think that such a group insists there is no choice in privacy. It is a vountary group made by voluntary people and you have a choice to join and reveal or not join, no pressure... lol Are you serious? Why would you want to invade someone elses personal rights to assemble? lol" It has nothing to do with right of assembly or free choice of privacy. That's the whole point. The purpose of these groups is not to 'freely assemble' but to define another group.....non members....about whom aspersions such as 'dishonesty' ( see my list of group headers above ) can then be cast. These aren't groups that are saying something about their members.....they are quite specifically set up to say something about anyone who won't join ! So I take it you'd be quite happy for me to set up a group whose entire premise was that you were dishonest, a fake, fraudulent, etc, if you did not join ? You woud not find anything even remotely disagreeable about such aspersion by lack of association ?

"just as goreans have certain things they want in their group or pg type groups want in their groups.." "when they take it outside of their group and bring it to the public..then it's a grid problem.." But it effectivey already IS outside the group. We're not talking about inclusive groups, like stamp collectors or something where the group definition is a particular inclusive group and says nothing about outsiders. The whole purpose of these groups is that they are deliberately making a statement about you if you are NOT a member. Gorean groups don't have as their whole PURPOSE a statement about your RL status if you don't join !

"Source please. I don't think anyone WANTS to force anyone to prove anything." Lol....I'm just looking at some of the 'Verified RL....' group descriptions.....which contain phrases like.... 1) Tired of men pretending to be women or the other way around? This is the solution! Never let people cheat on you anymore! This group officially verifies if your sex is real. Verifcation done with voice and/or webcam verification. After you are officially verified, you will get the Verified Male / Female tag. And everyone will know you are real and honest! 2) the girl is ONLY verified if she has the tag "Verified Webcam"!! Do NOT accept any offer if the 'girl' doesn't have this tag!! 3) Upon joining this group as "Unverified", you can verify via voice, cam, or both to receive the Verified title and set the record straight. To receive the verified title, you must be over 18 (If you appear underage, you'll be asked to show a santized ID), and match the same sex as your avatar. If you have a first life photo, we can verify that too via webcam. 4) prove you're identity to us,and we let you join our group,so that everybody sees that you're real.. all the girls in our group are verified ! You seriously think these groups don't want to force anyone to prove anything ?????

"I don't agree with you about those who won't reveal their gender getting pushed into the "fake" box though. The only box they go in is the "won't reveal their gender" one." But the entire basis of groups such as 'Verified RL....' is that you are by default a fake if you wont 'verify'. No....they are not offering a 'wont reveal true gender' option. That's the whole point. The agenda being pushed is that you simply don't have the right to such privacy in the first place. These groups are basically arguing that the TOS is wrong.

"Your privacy argument is redundant since people joining these groups are doing so voluntarily." Well....no. The privacy argument is relevant because the entire basis of the existence of such groups is essentially an argument that people have no right to such privacy ! Anyone who is so paranoid that they feel that people simply must reveal their true status is effectively saying that the right to privacy itself must be overriden. "SL is awesome because it lets people choose how much they want to share." Come off it. Any group with a title 'Verified RL......' is not the least interested in that right of choice. It wants to override it. It is essentially demanding that one *has* no such right. The entire rationale of such groups is that people should NOT have the right to 'hide' infomation abou themselves.

"basically all i really have to say is..as long as they keep it in their group who cares?" But you probably know as well as I do that that entire ethos doesn't stay within those groups. I'm sure most women in SL have met the ( increasingly prevalent ) folks who *insist* on voice......and it is quite clear *why* they insist on it. The issue that I have is with inferences. Won't voice ? Won't 'verify' ? Oh....then you cannot possibly really be a woman. One is shoved into the 'fake' category by default. This runs totally counter to the whole notion of a world whose entire basis is the freedom to be whatever a person wants to be. What started out as ' Your World....Your Imagination'.....ends up just being a hyped up 3D extension of Facebook.

There are numerous such groups. Their pupose is exactly as their name implies........to 'verify' that a person is this or that in RL. For example, they 'verify' that a person is 'really' a woman by use of web cam or some such means. It's essentially for those paranoid people who cannot bear the thought that someone might not actually BE whatever sex, looks, race, height, degree of baldness, or whatever...that their avatar displays. Primarily it is used by what most refer to as the 'gender police'.......who simply cannot bear that anyone might be logged into SL with a sex other than their RL one.

Something strikes me as being increasingly absurd within SL. On the one hand, we have Lindens promoting the right to absolute 'privacy', right down to even trying to enforce the correct display of avatar online status and prevent people circumventing it. And yet....on the other hand we have increasing pressure upon people to reveal and be their 'real' selves. Not just through the promotion of links to Facebook, etc, but also through the ever increasing rise of, for example, groups with titles such as ' Verified RL...( substitute some RL attribute ). Now you might argue that it is entirely down to people to what extent they hide or reveal info. But really, that is not the way things actually *work* in SL. The rise of groups such as 'Verified RL Female', for example, puts increasing pressure on anyone ( be they really female or not ) to 'verify' or be excluded. That strikes me as being totally at odds with the general principle of the right to absolute privacy. If something as mere as online status is so sacrosanct......yet something like 'true' gender can be forcibly revealed through peer pressure....then we have a fundamental contradiction at the heart of SL. In my view, any group with title such as ' Verified RL.....' runs totally counter to the whole ethos of SL. The very existence of any such group implies that one does NOT have the right to such privacy. One has to wonder, then, why Lindens allow such groups to exist.

"There are times I want to be working on something involved with total access to my inventory (so using an alt is not an option) when I really want no interaction with the rest of the world for extended periods. " I keep hearing this argument..........from people not one of whom can tell me how the mere fact of someone knowing they are online affects that 'no interaction' in the slightest. Setting status offline doesn't stop people IMing......indeed, the absurdity is that the poster in the previous post I responded to argues that everyone sends IMs. So we have two people arguing mutually exclusive arguments for status blocking. So how does status blocking facilitate this 'no interaction' ? I doesn't make any difference whatever to IMs, notecards, etc etc. This whole 'no interaction' argument is bogus.....and many of the traders here even prove so by their comments.

"Leaving it be is far less disruptive than getting rid of it" It is not going to make a blind bit of difference for determined stalkers even if Linden Lab do totally 'fix' it. By definition a stalker is someone who already knows who you are in SL. They are highly likely to already know all one's favourite hangouts......and even if all one's groups are hidden it would not require that much effort to work out what they might be and join them. So this 'fix' will have no effect whatever for determined stalkers. And worse still......it means that the stalkee will be unable to use the code loophole to see when the stalker is online. After all.....this code 'fix' works both ways.

"Your analysis of my argument makes no sense at all. Customers will tend to not check my online status before IMing me. They send an IM and thus find out if I am online. " Duh.....it IS a ridiculous argument ! By definition you don't know about the ones who didn't send an IM.........and who used the damned online status that you are arguing for to see your status and NOT communicate because they saw you as 'not online'. DUH !!! How utterly, utterly, utterly absurd for someone to argue for how brilliant a business tool something is by arguing none of their customers use it ! We've obviously left Kansas waaaaay behind at this point.

"One day , somebody has asked me my credit card number ." And the relevance of that to someone simply knowing your online status in a virtual word is ?? "And again .. Why emerald has stored the links between avatars and IPs of some people they have never heard of them ? Or why developerrs of Redzone has stored some passwords of users they have never heard of them ?" Utterly irrelevant to the issue at hand. Plus, I was campaigning against Redzone at a time when most people were saying there was nothing wrong with it. Please keep up with the ludicrously irrelevant arguments. You make the case for scrapping being able to hide online status far better than I could possibly do. And really...if you are that paranoid about so-called 'privacy' in SL....then may I suggest an absolutely 100% guaranteed way of ensuring it. The X in the top right of the screen.

"I should not be beholden to you or to explaining myself to you if I want to indulge in TOS abiding skulduggery. It's none of your business whatsoever." It most certainly is my business if I bump into.....as I have done a number of times......a 'friend' who is showing as offline. And nobody can answer the one simple question.....why would anyone who isn't on friends list and who has never heard of you....want to know if you are online anyway ?? "As it happens, I often wish for minimal non-necessary interuptions while I am busy, while still being able to immediately respond in the instance a customer wishes to contact me. " Lol ! You've just totally contradicted yourself there.....and shown the utter absurdity of your argument. A person who has never heard of you is not going to give a monkey's if you are online or not.....even if it is displayed. So the only people who are going to want to communicate will BE those customers..............the one's you so desperately want to be able to communicate with but from whom you hide that you are even online !! "That's my business and if you see the fact that sometimes, I need to work without being tempted to socialize by open solicitation from friends to do so, while still wanting to be available to immediately provide non-social customer service as skuldugery, that still does not make it any business of your's." Lol ! Let's say I am a customer of yours. I have a complaint. I don't want to be fobbed off......I want answers right now. I look up your avatar in search.....and it says you are offline. So I take that at face value and don't communicate. You seriously call that being available for your customers ??? What a farce.

"Social environnemnt mean to meet some people . But 99 % of the users who can scan me if i am online are neither friends , neither contacts , neither old contacts , neither some people who are in common groups , neither some people who i have met one day . So it s normal to forbid them to know it. Why they should ?" You've lost me. Why would anyone who has never heard of you even want to know you are online ? It makes about as much senses as all these alleged stalkees claiming that anonymous alts stalk them. Like...er....how the blazes does a person know that an anonymous alt is stalking them ? And if the stalker is not anonymous, and you know who they are, wouldn't it be handy knowing when they are online ?? Sorry to introduce some logic into the discussion. ( switches off logic mode and hides it )

"1) To mute don t protect. 2) Busy mode don t protect 3) Online in groups are protected by teh combination of 3 ways : - the user may hide his groups . - the groups may hide their users - the groups may be in closed subscription" Er.....what....exactly.....are you being 'protected' from ?? All I see is a pedantic 'privacy' for its own sake......that is a complete joke unless one lives 24/7 on a private sim. OK so I know when someone is online. So what ? Ya think Rupert Murdoch might buy the story ? Is the CIA and MI6 desperately seeking this information while searching for Lord Lucan ? Are the Zeta Reticulans compiling a list of online people so they know what time to invade Earth ? Is Jesus gona hold up the rapture so everyone has time to log off ? What's more.....why would you even want to hide your status from the vast majority of people who don't even know you exist anyway ? And equally...why would you want to hide it from friends ? Sheesh ! Anybody'd think this was a social environment !

"Why are you so interested in knowing the online status of people who're neither on your friends list nor members of the same group as you, if they've set their preferences only to show their status to friends and group members? " Simple answer.........those people may actually be friends under another account one has. Also invaluable is the ability to know if someone has been online when one was offline. For example a few years back I had a friend in SL just disappear for over a week.....I had no idea what had happened. And it was only by using an online tracker ( which can send emails ) that I knew my friend had not been online for all that time. Nobody seems to be taking any of these social factors into account. It's yet another example of things being 'fixed', and people going on about code changes, without anyone considering the sort of multiple responses here ( and on the JIRA ) about how things are actually USED in SL. Just gota fix those non-existent issues......even if it cheeses off more people than it helps. Par for the course with SL.