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How Can I Check / Find Invisible Users In GTalk, Gmail Chat, Google Talk?

How Can I Check / Find Invisible Users In GTalk, Gmail Chat, Google Talk??

My previous post was – how to be invisible on Gtalk, Gmail chat, Google talk, to your friends. I was curious, naturally to find, if there were ways to find if any of my friends were invisible.

I know there might be arguments saying, if someone wanted to be invisible, they probably chose to be so, and would not like their privacy being breached. However, there is a counter argument for that can be found here.

Now coming to, if we can find if other users are invisible on Gtalk, Gmail chat, there are a few solutions I could came across when googling:

1> Found this one on Google help forum for GTalk / Gmail chat:

Let’s assume you suspect a friend is playing the ‘invisible’ game. First, go ‘off the record’. Then open a chat window session and send a test message (you just send a ‘Hi’). Now, if your friend is actually invisible, the message gets delivered normally, on the other hand, if the user is offline, you’ll get a message saying – ‘The user is offline at the moment and your message will be delivered when they login next time’.

I’ve tested this to an extent and this one seems to work fine without any issue.

2> This Perl script written by Srijith helps you find invisible users in Gmail.

Srijith’s code works like a charm on Linux, link: http://blog.sriunplugged.com/linux/find-invisible-users-in-gmail

Windows users do not have to worry as Vyompv, makes it easier for all Windows user (This was his comment on Srijith’s blog. Scroll down to download Windows version installer):

I got it worked at last in Windows. [i tried in Windows XP]
Guys download the perl from here http://strawberryperl.com/ [38MB file] and then from the programs menu take the command prompt from strawberry perl. And then type->cpan [ i have tried with normal command prompt it works smooth]
install these modules: [format to type inside cpan prompt->install ]
IO::Socket::SSL
XML::Stream
Net::XMPP
Authen::SASL
All will get installed without error [as it does in linux]

After that download send-xmpp from here http://sendxmpp.platon.sk/ [download this file sendxmpp-0.0.8.tar.gz.] .Hope you already have Winrar for extracting that file. [may be it works with zip, i didnt check it]
Extract the send-xmpp file and via command prompt go to that folder where its extracted and then do these commands:
1)perl Makefile.PL
2)dmake
3)dmake install

Thats it. Now copy the above script [be careful while copying hope you don’t make mistake] and paste in NOTEPAD [not wordpad] and save as “invi.pl” [Save as type All files and ANSI encoding. [save the file with quotes]
and then take the command prompt to the place where you kept that file and then type->perl invi.pl
I got the result without any error 🙂 . Hope you also enjoy the output.

3> vyompv’s Windows Installer:

You can download the older version of the software from here, and the new version, which is named as Atiguhyam, from here.

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How To Become Invisible In Gtalk, Google Talk, Gmail Chat

Google has introduced a new feature in Gmail chat that lets you go invisible while you still are logged into your account and are online.

This option will be available when you click on the drop down arrow mark where in you can set your custom messages. One of the options here will say ‘invisible‘ and selecting that will make your invisible and your friends and people on you Gmail chat will not be able to see you online.

However, there’s one funny thing I noticed here. I normally use Firefox and had selected invisible status, however, the its seems like the invisible status does not work in Internet Explorer, because the moment I log into my Gmail account Internet Explorer, my invisible status is changed to Visible.

Otherwise you become invisible while using gmail!

Now let us see how you can be invisible on Google Talk / GTalk:

Unfortunately, there is no way to be invisible on Gtalk directly yet. However, if you have the labs version installed, then you have the facility to go invisible. But you should know that the labs version is not as stable as the other version available for chatting.