Would you like to log on but show as offline ? Privacy

A question about : Would you like to log on but show as offline ? Privacy

I'd love your thoughts on this please .

As soon as we log in our Green light shows, & anyone checking our profile can see that we're online & exactly where in the forum we are.

I don't know about you, but sometimes I'd like to just like to log in to send a pm or thank a post, even browse the forums without being seen as online ..

Is it just me ? What do you think .. Ooo now to post the poll ( fingers crossed ) here goes

Best answers:

• Don't give a monkeys about the forum, but the same thing happens at work with Office Communicator. Fine when we're in the office but not so convenient when we're (pretending to) work from home...
• You can browse the forums without logging in.
  And if you're thanking people, anyone on that thread can tell your online anyway because they can see your thanks.
  So I can't really see that it makes much odds either way.
• You can read everything apart from discussion time and something else I can't remember without beng logged in but just create a 'read only' account if you want to.
• doesn't bother me. I don't feel the need to hide my online status.
• I rarely log on anyway nowadays, and even if i do, no one really knows me on the boards any more, but in the past i have been quite a prolific poster and would have been very glad for the opportunity to be able to log on to pm people and the like without feeling i had to acknowledge others just because i was online, so very much with you on this one mandi, onwards and upwards chick xxxxxx
• Well if I am honest most things today seem to track where we have been or what we are doing. It just seems to be a fact of life that people seem to accept. Personally I do not like it in many circumstances as it always seems to invade privacy.
  Regarding this forum though I can understand why they use the green symbol. If you want to pm somebody it shows you that they are online and able to pick up messages. Most people to be honest are not interested in what others are doing on the forum. They would only be interested at what they are looking at on the threads.
  It probably would be a good thing to have a choice to show as online or offline though (possible improvement?) so you could pick up messages as and when you want to instead of feeling that you need to respond quickly due to having a green light showing.
  If you want to browse the forums without being seen online this can be done though by signing out but still using the website.
• What you have to remember is that this forum is so widely supported there are many times when you would prefer to be incognito.
  I have to say it staggers me how naive (sp?) people still are, and i think there is far far too much trust placed in popular forums, just because it is well known or owned by a credible company it doesnt make it any the more safer or the more private, and sometimes our privacy is important to us.
  Hmmm, i havnt phrased that very well, but i know what i mean lol!!! x
• Being tagged as logged in or out is okay but telling people where you are in the forum is a bit much tbh.
• Thank you sheel and ruby
  xx