How to Hide your Presence on Email & Chat

Today’s always-on technology means you can get online whenever you want, wherever you are, but the down side is that you too are ‘always-on’, constantly available and contactable. You can’t even take a peek at Facebook without people seeing what you’re doing, and if they then take that opportunity to contact you, they’ll even see when you read their message. Fortunately, it is possible to use the web casually without everyone spotting you and without resorting to heavy-handed measures such as installing a VPN or switching to Tor. In this feature, we round up the https://bestfrontandreardashcam.com/ [1] to make yourself invisible on your favorite online services, so nobody knows you’re there and you don’t feel pressured to reply instantly to their messages. In this guide, we show you how to make yourself appear offline and disguise your online availability in multiplayer games, stop people from knowing when you’ve read their emails or using Skype.

Stop people seeing that you’ve read their emails

When you receive a newsletter or a marketing email from friends [2] or someone else, there’s a chance that the sender will have embedded a tracker in the message that lets them know when you’ve opened it. Not only that, but the tracker can also send back information on the device you opened it on, your location and any links in the message that you click. Amazon, for example, is notorious for doing this, and admits so in its privacy policy. This tracker usually takes the form of an invisible, 1x1-pixel image, so it’s not something you can see. The easiest way to identify which messages come with a tracker is to install the Chrome extension [3] Ugly Email (https://bit.ly/ugly451 [4]), which also works in Vivaldi. You can only use it with Gmail and, once it’s installed, it will open that service in a tab. Messages that have a tracker will be marked with an eye icon in the subject line. Ugly Email doesn’t only identify trackers, it blocks them as well, so you can open a message without the sender knowing. Another way to block trackers is to stop images – including 1x1 web bugs–from loading automatically. In Gmail, click the cog icon and, on the General tab, tick ‘Ask before displaying external images’. If you know an email is from a sender who would never track you, you can allow the pictures to display.

Prevent Gmail from revealing you’re online

Google Hangouts, one of the search giant’s many messaging services, integrates tightly with Gmail [5]. To make it easier for your contacts to know when you’re logged in and able to chat, it displays a status button that other people will see so they can initiate a conversation with you. But if you don’t want them bothering you, this feature is easy enough to disable – just click your name in the left-hand side bar and, in the window that appears, un-tick ‘ Show when you were last active’. If you never use Hangouts, you can signout of the chat service by clicking the button at the bottom of the window. Doing this means you won’t be able to see when other contacts are around to chat with, but this obviously won’t matter if you’re not a Hangouts fan. However, although the green status light is for Hangouts, it does have another benefit, if someone is shown as active, it might mean you get a speedier response to emails because you can see that the person is currently checking Gmail.

Hide your online status in Skype

Microsoft’s communication tool marks you as available to chat when you sign in, but you might simply want to read old messages or call a specific person without letting everyone else know you’re online. Thankfully, Skype [6] lets you set your status to ‘Invisible’, which marks you as offline to everyone in your contact list. To change your profile in the desktop application, click the Skype menu in the top-left corner, hover your mouse over Online Status and select Invisible from the menu that appears. If you’re using the Skype app for Windows 10,c lick your profile picture and change the status there. [caption id="attachment_476" align="alignnone" width="304"] Hide your online status in Skype[/caption] If you access Skype on mobile (Android or iOS), select the Chats tab and tap your profile picture at the top. Tap the Active button to change your presence to ‘Do not disturb’ (which means you can still be contacted, but won’t receive notifications) or Invisible.