Basically, ANY activity where the owner of the planet accesses that planet (as pointed out by Spy) should show activity, in addition to other players accessing that planet through attack, espionage or transports (not sure on transports). In fact, activity will show even if the player just clicks on that planet and enters it's overview, therefore the fuss about which missions cause activity is irrelevant, if the player currently has that planet selected and is actively moving through it's 'pages', activity will show. Hence why (I believe), it is against the rules to use browsers with the auto-refresh capability when playing ZE.

There are only two conditions that would stop activity showing on a planet when the owner has launched an espionage (or deploy) mission from it:

1 - They launched from the moon, not the planet.

2 - It's a bug.

well the message has now auto deleted so I can't copy and past it here for you but I made sure to verify when this thread was started in the bug forum that the report said that "an enemy fleet from planet..."

So I guess my next question is will the esp report say that it was a fleet from a moon if it was from a moon instead of a planet?

It will still say planet, but use the moon's name if it came from the moon. For example, a planet called Test, and it has a moon called Test Moon. If the probe came from the moon it would say "... from the planet Test Moon.."

In that case I can't say that I properly verified that it was from the planet and not the moon. however I have been probed by this particular player many times every day for the last week and judging by the fact that he does not seem to rename his moons and that the reports that I do have still I have verified that the probe was sent from the planet and not the moon, I think it is safe to say that this is a bug. I just wish that I still had the proof.

WTF?! When was that changed?

WTH?! You mean those people who attacked me continued their attack even after I showed activity on my planets? LMAO
And I thought I was good at stealth.