Can Administrators and Mods Read PMs?

I'm very curious about this so I thought I'd post this question on a board I trust. I'm going to guess Administrators can see everything... but can the moderators read member's private PMs?

This is currently being debated on another site I visit, but it's difficult to trust the mods saying "no" when others state they have emails from banned members who say their PMs must have been read by the mods.

What is the truth? Thanks in advance!

Hi there,

this "board" is a vBulletin one...

Without getting to techy, (unless you want me to), yes it is possible for the SuperAdmin and whomever they wish to read PM's.

The only person here that would be able to read PM's is me, no one else.

I however have never had the need to read any PM's.

There are a lot of moral etc implications.

I know of other 'webmasters' that have to have the ability to read Pm's because of the age of their 'customers', the PM's are automatically checked in case of inappropriate behaviour.

This however is not a feature built into vBulletin the owner of the site needs to download a 'plugin' to do this.

I would not believe what you are being told on the other website !

If they want to read the PM's then they can. At least the main Admin would be able to.

This is a link to the patch, and quite an active discussion on the subject !

regards

Ric

WOW Ric! Very informative and you beat me to it.

I just sent her a PM in response because I wasn't sure how open you were towards this type of conversation.

And yes, it most certainly does have moral implications. Actually, this is a very interesting issue or discussion relating to internet and internet privacy.

..the Internet isn't private !

;-)

D'oh!

There is a lot of naivety when it comes to privacy on the Internet...

Most people who work in Offices have no idea that the IT department (by request of the big bosses !) can and do routinely read every incoming and outgoing email.

They can also tell you what computer has visited what website at any given time...

I am always amazed when going into companies on how many people think that because their 'boss' can't see them using myspace or flickr etc then they think they are getting away with it...till the annual review comes round.

Everything is logged...

Nowadays when people sign a "Contract of Employment", there will be a section that says... "we (the company) can and routinely do check/scan all Internet and email activity"...or something along those lines.

Which basically means, everything can be read and monitored.

I am the admin for three different boards, all running on PHPBB (a different system from vBulletin) one on the new system 3 and two on the older system 2, and I have never found any way using the software to read any PMs. I set these boards up, and so have some knowledge of how they work.
However, if I was a database geek, I would probably find a way. I do know that the database is encrypted, so it wouldn't be easy... and probably not worth my while
Just my few cents...

Siddie.

Very informative! Thanks so much!

Hi Siddie,

a similar mod is available for PHPBB boards. As you say database geeks can get into this data very easily...

Personally I don't see why under normal circumstances any admin neads to read PM's.

regards

Ric