Available -v- Invisible in outlook.live.com

[stockhausen]

On the odd occasion that I still log onto Hotmail my status defaults to "Available".

I have absolutely no idea what exactly this means and Google doesn't help much. I do know that I get a lot of SPAM and some years ago, a friend sent me an email to say that they could see that I was logged into the Hotmail account that I used to use regularly.

I don't appear to be able to change the default status anywhere in the Account Settings. Does anyone have any idea how I can get my status permanently to default to "Invisible"?

 

[stockhausen]

This gets even worse - the status is magically changed back from "Invisible" to "Available" during a session!

 

[rebel rebel]

Where did your friend see you online? They stopped msn messenger a few years ago when they merged with Skype.

On my android tablet I don't have any status settings.

 

[stockhausen]

Where did your friend see you online? They stopped msn messenger a few years ago when they merged with Skype
...

I don't know, it was a while ago, perhaps even a "few" years.

...
On my android tablet I don't have any status settings.

Personally, I mostly access Hotmail on a PC - when I still bother; frankly I tend to avoid both Hotmail and Gmail these days whenever I can.

 

[bayo000]

It's a Skype thing. I think all outlook/ hotmail emails now have Skype account by default so the status should be related to that.

 

[DaleTheWhale]

Yep, if you go to Outlook, you'll see the Skype icon in the top right.
If you sign out of Skype to stop getting messaged, it logs you out of Outlook...

Highly annoying as my Xbox friends see me as online all the time, even though I don't play Xbox anymore!

 

[stockhausen]

Just tried logging in to Outlook again - it actually initially flagged me as "Invisible" (presumably the default) and the changed it to "Available"!