SPT You Can't Hide From God

I just need a little peace, man.... Well don't we all. This page talks a little bit about peace, quiet, calm, security, and discretion.

There are currently several different levels of privacy available to the Palace user, ranging from the simple to the complicated, from the loose to the highly secure. They range from the simple privacy of whispering to your friends in a private room to total isolation. Some are secure from everyone; in some cases, a little knowledge about the eerie powers of wizards and gods may help you along.

Whispering

 Whispering is very secure.
Time to dispel a couple of common myths, palace legends. Both are about supposed ways to subvert the whisper mechanism. Both are wrong. And both are persistent I'm asked about both on at least a weekly basis.
Myth #1: Wizards and/or Gods Can Eavesdrop on Whispering
False! Just false. They can't. You could whisper in a room chock-full to the gills with wizards, and unless you were deliberately whispering to a wiz, no wiz would hear you.
(Recently, there has been a new development...)

Myth #2: You Can Write a Cyborg Script That Will Let You Eavesdrop On Whispering
False! I am constantly being asked to reveal this bit of mythic code. The legend has developed a life of its own, and a mythic history: people think I wrote it, or "KORN" wrote it, or "Hwy".... but the truth is, it does not exist, nor can it exist. This cyber-urban legend has its slim basis in reality from a special room script, apparently written by "Monitron" and even that doesn't eavesdrop on whispering.
Whispers are transmitted directly from the sender to the central palace server, where they are sorted and sent only to the intended party. Your own local cyborg (which runs on your machine, not the server) never even knows that a whisper happened.
Similarly, it's not possible to write a cyborg script that will eavesdrop on conversations (whispered or otherwise) going on in other rooms. As far as your cyborg is concerned, the current room is the only one that exists. It has no way to access the events in other rooms. There are no peepholes (not even for TCP/IP diverters).
(That said, there is a caveat about scripting...)

Here's a handy little item to add at the end of your INCHAT block, BTW (okay, this belongs in the House o Bots. So sue me, already. Just go ahead): 
    {
	"" CHATSTR =
    } WHOTARGET
      WHOTARGET	WHOCHAT ==
      WHOME	WHOCHAT == OR NOT AND IF
When you have someone selected for whispering, this bit will filter-out the on-screen text of all other users (their words will still appear in the log, however). It makes whispering in a noisy room feel a bit more private (In the BotBot this is known as whisper mute).

The Spirit World

 ESP is just whispering across rooms. Like whispering, it's pretty secure, as long as the person you're whispering to doesn't log off while you're talking (in which case, just as with a whisper, your comment is suddenly blabbed to the entire room!).
ESP is more secretive than regular whispering in two respects: (a) it's less obvious to outsiders who is talking to whom, and (b) ESP is completely invisible to Iptscrae scripts. Bots don't get ESP. It doesn't trigger the INCHAT handler (this is also true of messages sent by ROOMMSG though in a curious contradiction, the purpose of ROOMMSG is to not be private... go figure).
Five special server commands have application to the spirit world and whispering:
`re <message>
Provides a new immediate way to respond to ESP'd messages without digging through the "Find User" list.
`rejectesp [on|off]
Turning this on will prevent all other users from ESPing to you.
`rejectprivate [on|off]
Turning this on will not only prevent others from sending you ESP messages, but will block all private messages ESP and whispers both. Handy when you're having a hard time concentrating.
`mute <name>
Turned on, you'll not hear from this person again...
`unmute <name>
...unless you `unmute them.

Lockable Rooms

 Locakable rooms are useful for many things, particularly for shuffling props around. Prop-shuffling in public rooms is problematic because there always seems to be the annoying passerby who will either grab your loose props or type "clean" at an inopportune moment (of course, there's always the Dressing Room...).
Lockable rooms keep others out, and thus ensure that level of privacy. They mark themselves and you as (closed) in the find lists. That may or may not always be what you want, as the illustration shows. Simple deduction wins out.

Rooms/Users
The GotoRoom and FindUser Windows
(Where's the Circus?)

Hiding

 `Hiding removes you from the "Find User" list. It doesn't hide your avatar, you're not rendered invisible; it just makes you harder to find across rooms. You can't see yourself in the list, nor can others. You may not send ESP when hidden. You cannot hide from a god. Or a wizard. Worse yet, the Wiz/God may not even know that you are meant to be hidden, which can sometimes lead to some... comedy. Contrary to popular belief, wizards cannot open or enter locked rooms. But Gods can enter such a room, and open the lock from the inside (of course, a wizard could just `kill everyone inside the room and watch the door open by itself...).

Members' Palace and Beyond

Need more privacy yet? Move out of the main palace into a members' palace, or to Finchnest, or Marathon Palace, or any of the hundreds of Palaces slightly less-busy that the Communities.com Main Mansion. It should come as no surprise that Communities.com now-defunt Members was known colloquially as "Holiday Inn." You can create a new room with your umfriends and promptly `rhide it, making the whole room just as invisible as you would be when `hidden.

Complete Escape

 Of course, you could always head off to somewhere else entirely. To another server, or to your own. You could use IRC or ICQ. Heck, pick up the phone. Send some e-mail.
Is it 2AM yet? Maybe the bars are still open...