When - as an admin - you impersonate a user, their last seen is updated. That is of course because you completely impersonate the user as if he were behind the keyboard.
But… you’re not the user. You might use that option to quickly check something from the point of view of the user.
So, is it possible to skip updating the last seen? And maybe there are other things that should not be updated when logged in through the admin account.
I agree, its something that would be handy for diagnostics.
I undeleted this older topic because it relates to impersonate which is currently being looked at in Add 'stop impersonating' link to user avatar dropdown when impersonating - #41 by ted.
I noticed that the behavior in the OP is still the same as back in 2013. If you impersonate a user it updates their last seen date, which is easily reproable by looking at the admin user list. I just impersonated a user on my personal site that hadn’t been seen for a few years and they are now second in the list.
I suspect the same is true on the public user list and in who’s online if that plugin is installed.
I think there was already a feature request that wasn’t deleted
Suggestion: Impersonating an account should not affect "last seen" date
Good catch! The conversation continues in this later topic: