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My chat profile says

last seen 38m ago

What does that mean? I can think of many possibilities:

  • it's the last time I was in a room;
  • it's the last time I was in a room, open in a browser window;
  • it's the last time I was in a room, open in an active browser window;
  • it's the last time I was in a room, open in an active browser window, and moved my mouse or typed in that window;
  • etc.

What's the definition of "seen" here?

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Not official answer however based on experience I believe that to be correct.

When you're in a chat room, there's a "keep alive" messages sent from your browser to the server in fixed intervals, think every 30 seconds or something like that.

This is responsible, among other things, to remove users from a room when they close the browser window without manually leaving the room first, e.g. when the server doesn't get any "keep alive" ping for a while.

So, the "last seen" is the last time the server got such a keep alive ping. When you're inside a room (any room on the chat domain) it should always be around one minute, otherwise it's pretty much the time you last visited a room.

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  • So being on (for example) the page chat.stackexchange.com does not affect one's "last seen" time, then?
    – msh210
    Commented Oct 1, 2023 at 8:38
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    @msh210 as far as I can tell and from what I've seen, it doesn't affect, the last seen means seen inside chat rooms. Note that it will also show when you were last seen in private rooms. (Though no way to know which, of course.)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Oct 1, 2023 at 8:42

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