Topic: Question for Dan and imput from others too

[Jeannine]

 Hi, I was surprised to hear on a forum a couple of days ago that admin and moderators can see anything that comes through their site including PM messages and  full details on profiles. Is this correct please?

Also can you tell me what is the difference   between an administrator and  a  moderator and do they each have the same access to private stuff.

I find this quite interesting and am curious to know if it is different on different sites.

Finally how does it work on ours please

Thank you

XX Jeannine

[Eristic]

You have to accept that anything on the web can be viewed by certain people, not necessarily even the admin or mods. The Administrator controls the moderators and can set permissions that vary from site to site and from mod to mod but beside that any webmaster or site hosting personell with privilege can access the database manually or by script.

That's just the up front legit people. The there are the hackers and mfi and the ilk all having a nosy.

Don't say anything you don't want published worldwide.

[tim]

Don't know about PMs, but the threads are viewable on Google.

[Jeannine]

Thank you for the reply, I realise about the web but I was wanting more specifics.   I know a question I put here can be viewed on the web,and other stuff too.I was surprised when googling  recently that my name showed up with a reference to school twinning. I was more wanting to know about so called Private Messages rather than threads.

If it differs between sites, what are the rules on this one.


eg, If I send a PM to you Eristic, who can read it apart from you and I.

XX Jeannine

[Baccy Man]

The quick answer is:

If you sent a PM to Eristic only he would be able to read it unless he forwarded it to someone else or you sent him an abusive PM & he chose to report it in which case it would be forwarded to Dan.
Theoretically somebody could hack into the site & read it but there is no obvious reason why anybody would want to do this.

The long answer is:

Some forum software has an option in the control panel to allow Admins to view users PMs there are also plugins available to allow the same thing if the software doesn't already contain that feature.
The reason this is feature exists is so that an admin can investigate accusations that a specific user is sending out abusive or offensive PMs. Using it for any other reson would be considered inappropriate & unethical but would be perfectly legal. Most forums that have this feature enabled would clearly state the fact in the T&Cs or privacy policy.

If this feature was not enabled then the only way an admin would see any of your PMs would be if you forwarded one on to them or you reported an offensive message.

To the best of my recollection moderators are not able to read other peoples PM's.


As far as full details on profiles goes most forum software will not by default allow an admin or mod to view anything you have chosen to keep hidden ie; email address, location, age etc... but there are plugins available that allow both admins & mods to view this information. Of course you can just leave most fields blank rather than entering the information then choosing to hide it & you could set up a separate email account (gmail, hotmail, yahoo etc...) so you don't have to use your personal email address in your profile but can still receive message notifications etc...

Both admins & mods can view your ip address which is logged each time you make a post this could potentially be used to trace the name, address, phone number, internet service providers details etc.. of the owner of the computer you were using when you made that post.
Although this sounds like it could potentially be a big invasion of privacy the only 2 things ip adresses are generally used for is to report a spammer to their ISP or an ip can be banned so that person can no longer access the site. Most commonly this is used for spammers/spambots rather than genuine members.
I believe Dan said recently in a thread about forum rules that only 2 members have ever had to be banned from this site.

Coincidentally anybody can look up the registration details of a websites owner it only takes seconds to do & contains a lot of personal information like name, address, phone number, email etc... Which means that Dan's personal info is actually much more easily accessible than yours.

[Eristic]

If Jeannine sends a PM to me this would normally only be viewable by me but nothing on any forum is out of bounds for the administrator. Bear in mind though that once the PM has been viewed by the recipient on a computer, anyone with access to that computer possibly could also view the message.

Then there is the webmaster or web maintenance company. This may or may not be the administrator. This person, people will have access to the database direct at a lower level than the forum software and can read the contents at will.

Web sites and associated databases are usually hosted by a third party and maintenance staff with privilege could also peek in should they wish.

Joomla and phpbb are probably the most popular targets in the world for script kiddies and most servers will receive an intrusion attempt at least once a day. If security is weak they get in.

At no point should the content be accessible to search engines.

The weakest point in all of this is probably at your own computer/s. Anyone nosing in here could easily copy/paste to an open forum which would then get hoovered by Google within 24 hrs.

I've never run a forum so cannot say if any of the moderaters could view or not but I spend far too many hours staring at the back end of DBs during their construction.

[kenkew]

Rest assured that Mod's on A4A are no different to other members with regard to having access to PM's. Mod's assist Admin in helping to run sections of the site and those Mod's are mentioned in the sections they run or assist.....and that's it;

There are no other permissions requested or granted and I'm certain none would be given even if someone had the gall to ask.

 (What sort of person would want to read private messages sent to others?)

Ken.

[rosebud]

About 3yrs ago i asked Dan about PMs, because i saw something on google & Dan assured me that PMS were read only by the sender & recipient.
If that helps i am sure Dan will answer any questions about it when he has time.

[SamLouise]

Dan reads all of our PMs then sells them on eBay. 

[kenkew]

(Only the ones I don't intercept!)


Joke, honest.

[Admin aka Dan]

The short answer ....

If you send someone a PM only you and the person you sent that PM to can read it.

It will never appear on a search engine.

If you have read a PM on a computer, in theory that PM can be extracted from the computer you viewed it on.  This is no different from any information you view on a computer - it can be retrieved at a later date by someone with access to that computer, having said that it is not an easy process to view the information.

The Long answer ....

If anyone with access to the database logins to the server where a website is hosted (in the case of allotments4all, this list contains one person, me), wants to view a PM they can.  It is not an easy process, and involves querying the database direct, the information is held on several tables, and would take quite some time to access.

In Either case ....

Once you have deleted a PM from your inbox, it is no longer stored on the database, so it can not be accessed in any way by anybody.

Hopefully that answers the question, let me know if I've spoken rubbish, or you have another question.

Cheers

Dan