Linden Lab Official:Voice Chat Privacy

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Revision as of 13:56, 18 July 2011 by Rand Linden (talk | contribs) (→‎Region maturity and voice chat)
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This article contains information about the level of privacy in Second Life voice chat.

Security

Private calls

Private calls between two Residents are not encrypted. However, the call does not pass through any Linden Lab or Vivox servers; they are conducted on a peer-to-peer basis between the two computers involved. "Peer-to-peer" means that when you initiate a private voice call, your computer connects directly to the other computer for the purposes of voice communication.

Spatial voice chat

Spatial voice chat, meaning public voice chat with people who are near you inworld, is processed and mixed on servers maintained by Vivox. Linden Lab and Vivox do not monitor or log spatial chat conversations unless we are troubleshooting quality or technical performance issues.

Privacy Options

Restrict voice to a parcel

If you own land, you may choose to restrict voice access to your parcel:

  1. While standing on your land, choose World > About Land.
  2. Click the Media tab of the About Land window.
  3. Check the Restrict Voice to this parcel checkbox.

When you restrict voice to your parcel, Residents who are standing on your land can only send and receive spatial voice chat from other Residents who are also on your land. Similarly, Residents who are outside the land parcel cannot communicate over spatial voice chat with Residents who are inside the land parcel. Private voice chat over IM and group voice chat are unaffected by parcel voice chat settings.

Region maturity and voice chat

Spatial voice chat on Adult regions uses a different voice channel than chat on Moderate and General Regions. This means that a Resident on an Adult region cannot hear voice chat from a Resident in a Moderate or General Region, and a Resident in a Moderate or General region cannot hear voice chat from a Resident in an Adult region. Text chat and private voice chat are unaffected by region boundaries.