Should admins be allowed to read members pms?

IMHO, Private messages are intended to be private so I don't look unless there's an issue between members or with spamming. When reading someone else's PM, it's generally in the form of a forward from the recipient. The only time I'll actually look in the database is to confirm a forwarded PM that sounds out of character from the sender.

 

Only time I would read a PM is if it got reported to us, otherwise I don't read any of them.

 

Only time I would read a members PM is if it is forward to me by a member or if a PM is reported of some reason but so far that has not happened yet

 

One reason I use this is because you get some people decide to randomly PM inactive accounts, and because their accounts are not active, they won't report the PMs and you can't deal with these sorts of spammers if you can't read users PMs.

I don't really condone reading PMs, and nor do I make it a habit of it, but honestly, if something is meant to be private, you will use your personal email or something to send your message(s) and not communicate via forums PM systems, that way you can at least be 99.9% sure that your conversation will be private between yourself and the person you wish to message and that the forum admins cannot see the message

 

Well we all have to remember that nothing can be hidden from the admins/server administrators and it is up to them to decide to read the contents or not.

As I said beforehand, I don't condone doing it, but I will do it when I feel it's necessary to do so

 

Of course, I'd do it if I found out someone was spamming my members' using competitor urls. Because, unless you running an online game forum, then what's the point of checking PMs? It's like running an online games site, you'd check member's pms to see if the member is cheating or not.

But to just flat out read them? That's being noisy.

 

What a rather strange question to ask(referring to title of topic). Admins can do whatever they want. I honestly wouldn't use PMs for stuff I want to keep private. It's honestly foolish to do so considering their is no such thing as private conversations on the internet. There is no way for you to know who has read your pm outside of the recipient Your best bet for private discussions is through an IM program where there is no one able to read anything outside of you and the recipient.

 

Same here, if it is seriously private, you will take it elsewhere where you know it will definitely be private like email, IM, text or phone, etc.

 

I don't know who you directed that at but I will put my thoughts on it. What I am saying is I wouldn't trust someone to not read something when they can do so without leaving any evidence behind that they did.

I don't support reading people's PMs unless someone reports/forwards it to report abuse. I do realize that not everyone is of the character to be able to resist reading them hence why I don't use the Pms for anything I really want to keep private. It's just an example of being safe on the net.

Just because I tell someone to not send private stuff via Pm because it's not really private has no correlation to my thoughts on reading PMs not sent to me. I imagine everyone else would agree with that.

 

NO! Most community software has mods that would allow you to read them (and of course if you control the MySQL, you can browse the database and read them.) To me, it is an invasion of privacy ("Private Message" after all) I know it is my forum, I know it is not illegal to do it, but you have to allow members their privacy in some aspects. Other members can use the report pm function for pm's that should be looked at.

 

Well, let' say that, as long as you have access to the database, you can actually read ANYTHING. Not to mention you can log into accounts (even if it means changing passwords) etc.

Should you do this? Of course not. I try to teach my members to NOT accept any abuse and report anything they are not OK with. I can then do my admin job. I don't snoop into their PM inboxes, I don't care about the information that's in my database. Fortunately I didn't have to play 'CSI' on my forums so far

 

I think private messages should remain private. The only time you, as an admin, should get involved is if someone reports a message as spam or breaching the rules somehow.

That's my opinion on the matter, but I'm fully aware that it's not a "perfect" world and it's likely people will give in to temptation and have a snoop.

As Bluezone said: if I wanted to keep something truly private it's not something I would use the PM system for.

 

The admin is called that for a reason. They should have access to everything on their forum. There are reasons like abuse or spamming where reading private messages may be necessary. You just don't want a situation where the admin is reading pms just because they can. But the only way to avoid that is not to use the pm feature and the problem is solved. lol