Access of Moderators to PMs.

[Paulus II]

Excellent Troy,

Now let's all leave this vendetta behind us and start talking about the Wehrmacht and its endeavours again!

Please!!

[sid guttridge]

Hi Paulus,

What vendetta?

This is not a personal matter.

This is a matter of broader principle that badly needed to be thrashed out because it affects us all.

There was a breach of trust by a moderator on another forum who is also a member here. The other forum operates in a manner similar to the set up here on Feldgrau. This moderator made public private details given in confidence and at least three different members' PMs were read.

This moderator then apparently locked out the owner of the site and, I am told, refused (and perhaps still refuses?) to give that owner vital information that may be of value in tracking down a hacker who disrupted the site.

Furthermore, that incident dragged in one of the moderators from here, thereby leading to questions about the integrity of this site as well.

After that we badly needed reasurance that our PMs really are PRIVATE Messages.

I have now got a measure of assurance that Feldgrau is reasonably secure.

But trust in all sites has been damaged by this affair. To characterise this as a vendetta is to trivialise a serious issue. This was the most serious breach of the integrity of a forum I have yet experienced, because it was an "inside job".

Cheers,

Sid.

[Paddy Keating]

Whatever, Sid, whatever...

Are you sure you didn't nuke your own website, Troy?



PK

[Paulus II]

Sid,

To characterise this as a vendetta is to trivialise a serious issue

The serious issue (which I agree is a serious issue) was brought up by you and has been answered by some of the moderators. Though the answers have been more about their personal knowledge and possibilities in this issue than as a forum-rule. That one is still pending an answer.

Meanwhile you have been slugging it out with Keating in public about who did what and when. Insinuations and accusations about each others deeds and words have been flying all over the place.
THAT is a vendetta.

Knock it off both of you.

Very boring and no good for the forum.

[pzrmeyer2]

Hi Paulus,

What vendetta?

This is not a personal matter.

This is a matter of broader principle that badly needed to be thrashed out because it affects us all.

There was a breach of trust by a moderator on another forum who is also a member here. The other forum operates in a manner similar to the set up here on Feldgrau. This moderator made public private details given in confidence and at least three different members' PMs were read.

This moderator then apparently locked out the owner of the site and, I am told, refused (and perhaps still refuses?) to give that owner vital information that may be of value in tracking down a hacker who disrupted the site.

Furthermore, that incident dragged in one of the moderators from here, thereby leading to questions about the integrity of this site as well.

After that we badly needed reasurance that our PMs really are PRIVATE Messages.

I have now got a measure of assurance that Feldgrau is reasonably secure.

But trust in all sites has been damaged by this affair. To characterise this as a vendetta is to trivialise a serious issue. This was the most serious breach of the integrity of a forum I have yet experienced, because it was an "inside job".

Cheers,

Sid.

Jesus, Sid how many threads have you started on this issue? you got what you wanted, Paddy is no longer a moderator on feldpost. what else do you want?

[John W. Howard]

Hello All:
It may interest all of you to know that few if anyone here gives a rat's ass about what happened on the other site. If you folks want to argue do it by PM, which as I understand it is protected on this site from anyone seeing it unless express permission is given by the member to have his PM's reviewed by someone from administration.

[Commissar D, the Evil]

The Commissar says that no moderators in this childish thread have ever shown a bit of interest in this childish thread due its utter irrelevancy to the mission of Feldgrau.

So. I am closing it,

Cheers,
~D the EviL

[Commissar D, the Evil]

On further thought;

The Commissar says that no moderators in this childish thread have ever shown a bit of interest in this thread due its utter irrelevancy to the mission of Feldgrau. As a senior member of the Forum, and a long-standing moderator without an axe to grind, I can assure you that no moderator has access to your PMs--it's that simple!!!!

Afterall, only God knows what you have said in private about the lone African-American Moderator on this site and no one can accuse me of any prejudice, only disagreement with honest posts on the open Forum!!
I am therefore not closing this thread as an exercise in paranoia

Look at it this way, If I, as a Moderator, were to pry into your private PM's and your worst fears, would I not regard those members whom I suspect as racists to be singled out for especial persecution??????

As an African-American, I don't think any of you can consider that I have opposed your thoughts except on the open Board of Feldgrau and done so only when we have publicly disagreed Andyly only when what has has been written on the open Board. This fact alone should assure you that your PM''s are held by Feldgrau as a strictly private matter.

Cheers and Best Regards,
David, The EviL Commissar

[Commissar D, the Evil]

My point is fundamentally, as Phil Collins' sang:

"You can slander my name all over the place,
"You can tell the world I''m a damned disgrace,
I don't care anymore--I don't care, what you say,
It didn't mean much too me anyway,..."

Very Best,
David

[Jason Pipes]

Ok folks. Here is how things work.

Admin level folks on any forum similiar to this one where content is stored in a database system do indeed have access to that content. Everything posted on this forum and/or sent via PM is stored within the tables that make up the database that forms the entirety of Feldgrau.net. By that very fact it means the information posted via PM is technically accessible.

Anything posted here regardless if it's via private message or on the forums proper should ALWAYS be considered to be potentially accessed. If you are communicating information that is for some reason seriously confidential, secret, personal or private, etc, you should do so via a secure channel outside of the context of this forum.

THAT BEING SAID, there is not now nor has the ever been a way for moderators or admin to actively or directly read private messages from users on the website. There does exist on the web a customized forum feature that can be used to easily read any PMs sent by any user on Feldgrau. This site does not currently use this feature. If and when that feature is added to Feldgrau it would only be used by the highest level admins on a case-by-case basis to aid efforts to investigate issues regarding website or user security or for matters involving law enforcement, etc. It would not be used on a casual basis for anything but the most serious matters, and then only by very specific members of the Feldgrau administration.

In closing, you can be certain that what you send in your PMs to other users is relatively secure and it is not actively being read by moderators or Feldgrau admin. It most certainly is not being read by other users on this site. You can feel comfortable using PMs to communicate information between users but if you are posting information that you feel is significantly confidental or of a sensitive nature you may want to send it via a different source simply due to the nature of stored content on a central database and the realities of internet usage in the modern age we live in.

I hope I have answered everyones questions regarding this matter.

If not please contact me in private.

[Paddy Keating]

In other words, administrators can and will access members' PMs if they feel it to be in the interests of security. This is pretty much all I was saying and I find it bizarre that some people seem so scandalised by it. As Jason says, if you wish to send messages that you would not wish the administration of any forum website to read, such as PMs discussing ways of disrupting the website or causing trouble for other members, do not send them via that website's internal communications systems if you think the management or some of the management have their eye on you!

PK

[pzrmeyer2]

On further thought;

The Commissar says that no moderators in this childish thread have ever shown a bit of interest in this thread due its utter irrelevancy to the mission of Feldgrau. As a senior member of the Forum, and a long-standing moderator without an axe to grind, I can assure you that no moderator has access to your PMs--it's that simple!!!!

Afterall, only God knows what you have said in private about the lone African-American Moderator on this site and no one can accuse me of any prejudice, only disagreement with honest posts on the open Forum!!
I am therefore not closing this thread as an exercise in paranoia

Look at it this way, If I, as a Moderator, were to pry into your private PM's and your worst fears, would I not regard those members whom I suspect as racists to be singled out for especial persecution??????

As an African-American, I don't think any of you can consider that I have opposed your thoughts except on the open Board of Feldgrau and done so only when we have publicly disagreed Andyly only when what has has been written on the open Board. This fact alone should assure you that your PM''s are held by Feldgrau as a strictly private matter.

Cheers and Best Regards,
David, The EviL Commissar

Dave,

you are not seriously suggesting that simply because you are ¨African-American¨that somehow you are immune to predjudice or have integrity above reproach are you? or that folks are writing PMs about you simply because you are black? If so, you would be committing the classic ¨they are out to get me¨conspiracy paranoia that sadly is so common to a plurality if not majority of American blacks who see everything through the prism of race and think that the reason for every failure in their lives is due to whitey and not due to personal responsibility and choice.

Perhaps you should consider that any PMs about you may be because of the outlandishness of some of your ideas or the manner in which you moderate as opposed to your skin color. Unless you think that the latter explains or excuses the former?

[Paddy Keating]

They're definitely out to get me. But my tinfoil hat will protect me.

PK

[Tom Houlihan]

Erik, I submit that you read that the wrong way. I believe David is saying that as a member of an ethnic minority, the way some people write on here, he COULD have been reading their stuff to find out if they were really ignorant rascist bastards. That he hasn't shows that he confines his feelings to the board, and doesn't spy on potential trouble makers.

David, is that about right?

[Paddy Keating]

It's a bit of a red herring because moderators do not normally have access to the administrative control panel features that allow access, directly or indirectly, to PM logs. Not that I am suggesting that Dave would read members' PMs to find out if they were saying nasty things about him.

Nor would I. Enough unpleasant things are written about me publicly so why would I need to access the authors' PMs to read more of the same sort of poison? I have only ever looked at PM logs when alerted to potential security issues or, in some cases, to members alleged to be using PM systems to spam other members with unsolicited offers and ads.

In the case of Troy Tempest's PM box, I took a look after allegations were made that he had deleted the website content himself in order to give Feldpost a fresh start...although three or four new members in the past month hardly represents a stellar growth rate. You have to bear in mind that I had a duty to the members as Tempest's deputy and that I had just watched a website deleted before my eyes by someone using Troy Tempest's account through both Tempest's normal IP address and another Australian IP address used by a regular Australian ISP.

I had to take over Tempest's account to shut out whoever was doing this and I was able to save some of the website as a result. I think that taking a look at Tempest's PMs was permissable under the extraordinary circumstances involved. I shan't rehash my subsequent exchanges with Tempest and some other people here as this is not relevant to this website. I am merely making these remarks in response to this ridiculous hoohah about reading members' PMs.

Jason Pipes has pretty much confirmed what I have already said. Perhaps he was a tad more subtle about it and perhaps that is why his remarks have not provoked the outrage that mine provoked. There again, the outrage in question is nothing but posturing and grandstanding. Now, hopefully, this will be the last of the many threads started by Sid about Private Messages. The lesson is clear: normal untroublesome members can use PMs with no worries but members of the small hardcore of people considered as troublesome should be careful of using the internal comms systems on any website where they feel that members of the senior management might be inclined to keep a weather eye on them.

PK