Question about guild member lists (online/offline status)

Sengra

Hi there,
I've recently noticed that some people on my guild list are listed directly below the members who are shown as 'online' but have the alliance symbol missing next to their account names. And the other day I communicated with one guild member via messages and noticed that he was one of those members, so he was clearly online.
So it seems to me there is no longer a way to really appear as 'offline' if you set yourself to 'offline'. Can someone tell me if I'm right and maybe explain to me what the reasoning behind this is? Was this mentioned in one of the recent patch notes or has it always been like that (I haven't payed that much attention to it before).

To illustrate what I'm talking about: