Tanking gear does literally nothing to stop you dying if you aren't online to do anything. And any small ship it does even less, especially if you are a speed tanker. Active tankers also gain nearly nothing by having their modules active. A cloaker however is immune to everything while cloaked. So a cloaker leaving his cloak on while disconnected is getting a massive advantage over everyone else. The only ships gaining from their tank remaining on are capitals, who might live to see you log on again.

When you want to be sure you are safe to log off in space, you do a "safe logoff". this counts down, and after the countdown you can log off and be instantly safe. If you see an enemy, you can cancel and deal with it. When you start the countdown, all modules turn off.
If this change was in place, a cloaker could crash out his game while running a cloak, mimicking a disconnect, sure that nobody would be able to see him because his cloak stays on. This is a benefit, because if hes in a hostile system and someones looking for him, they could probe him down in the 30 seconds the safe logoff takes, so this change would make him able to avoid that and stay in hostile space.

What happens right now if you are covert cloaked in a safespot and you hit ALT+F4?

Lets reply on this from the prespective of someone being AFK cloaky camped, as a disclaimer I want no changes to the cloak. When I have had people come into local (wonderful that, needs to stay) I have a brief opportunity to D-Scan the gates to get intel on what just came in. After that it is either the player having a DC or logging to do something else. Intel is required on what is actually in system, so I tend to loiter in a cloaked ship around areas in which I expect they will log off, in other words space which is not possible to be D-Scanned from gates, stations and belts. A DC is a lucky break for me, in that I can find out what the blighter is in and work back his likely fit. Your suggestion removes one of the few issues that AFK cloakies have, I would rather not see that happen!

Lets reply on this from the prespective of someone being AFK cloaky camped, as a disclaimer I want no changes to the cloak. When I have had people come into local (wonderful that, needs to stay) I have a brief opportunity to D-Scan the gates to get intel on what just came in. After that it is either the player having a DC or logging to do something else. Intel is required on what is actually in system, so I tend to loiter in a cloaked ship around areas in which I expect they will log off, in other words space which is not possible to be D-Scanned from gates, stations and belts. A DC is a lucky break for me, in that I can find out what the blighter is in and work back his likely fit. Your suggestion removes one of the few issues that AFK cloakies have, I would rather not see that happen!

So you "exploit" the misfortune of someone having a DC to gain intelligence? That doesn't sit right one bit and no, I'm not saying you are using a game exploit or abusing the TOS\EULA or whatever before the haters jump on it, just that you are taking advantage of someone who has the misfortune to fall foul of something outside of their control to which there is no counter.

Interesting...