Comment 3 for bug 444170

I think this is an issue with the indicator-session-applet talking to mission-control (via libempathy) to set the status. It supports pidgin as well, but I don't think it makes a decision which to use. Perhaps it should. So it sets your status as online, which tells mission-control you are only. It does not need empathy to be running to do this, and you appear to be online to your contacts. If they send an email, telepathy handles the incoming message because it is online even though you have no client running and spawns the client so you can read the message.

Overall this is pretty cool behavior, but we should be able to make a decision how you would prefer to handle your messages.

Let's get thoughts from Ted.