Can People See or Hear Me on the Away Setting on Skype?

Skype enables you to change your status when you're logged in to notify your contacts if you're available or not. You can set your status as online, away, do not disturb, invisible and off-line. Your contacts will see your status whenever you're online, unless you're set to invisible. When set to invisible, you'll appear off-line to your contacts, but you'll be able to see their status.

Away Status

The away status can be set by selecting it from the Status menu when you're logged in. Your status icon will appear yellow and your contacts will be able to tell you're set to away. Your current status appears next to your name in other people's contact lists.

Messages and Phone Calls

Contacts will still be able to send you messages and initiate video and audio calls when your status is set to away. They won't be able to see or hear you unless you accept the call. Instant messages will be delivered as if you're online, and you'll be able to reply instantly.

Going Inactive

You can set Skype to change to an away status if you have been inactive on your computer for a predetermined time. If you don't want your status to set to away when you've been inactive, you can set the value to 0 under the General Settings menu.