PM's How Private?

[classic33]

Oh goodness @jefmcg, just as well my only topic of conversation are cats and bikes, and occasionally moans about work.
Glad I'm not interesting enough to attract a hacker's attention!

You forgot tomato plants!

 

[Pat "5mph"]

You forgot tomato plants!

Ok, I forgot about the topics of gardening and food: still not very interesting to a hacker

 

[mjr]

Ok, I forgot about the topics of gardening and food: still not very interesting to a hacker

Hackers like food. People who break into computers are vandals, not hackers... but the media have screwed this up with their consistent lies, just like they have with the EU.

 

[Pale Rider]

Common sense says don't tap anything into a connected computer that you are not prepared to see published.

As regards work emails, you are using your employer's system so I don't see there can be any reasonable complaint if the employer looks at what's there.

 

[Shaun]

Okay they're now called conversations, but the basic questions remains the same. How private should they be? Rules say don't include anything that you'd not post on the forum. But try posting your phone number in Classifieds & see how long it stays there. How would you feel if something given in one was passed onto a third party? Is there an undefined line that can be crossed, so long as you can feel justified in doing so.

To be fair, the rules don't actually say that:

The personal conversation system allows you to communicate privately with others. The same rules of conduct apply. It is reasonable to expect privacy, but we cannot absolutely guarantee it; we therefore recommend you do not share anything via personal message that you would not want made public by any of the other participants. Personal information and private discussions may not be posted on the forums, unless there is clear consent from all parties.

In general, providing you trust the other conversation participants, you can expect your conversation to remain private. However, there are situations where the contents of a conversation can be exposed to people outside of the original conversation and you should consider this when exchanging personal information:

• Conversation participants can copy and share messages - either with other CC'ers via the PM system or off-site. Whilst it is expected that your confidence will be kept, we cannot guarantee it, so you should take care who you share deeply personal or private things with, and if something is of an extremely personal nature then consider not sharing it here and chosing another means of communication such as text message, email, etc.
  
• Other people can be invited into a conversation - you may begin a conversation with one person or group but then others are invited in at a later stage. When this happens they see the whole of the conversation. If you do not want something you've already said to be shown to the newcomers, it is advisable to start a new group conversation.
  
• Messages within a conversation can be reported to the moderator team - for example if someone is being abusive or spamming. It only shows the single, individual message that is being reported (not the whole conversation) and the mod team have no access to the conversation itself (unless you invite them in to deal with it).
• Replying to an email notification ends up in my Inbox - if you have email notifications enabled for personal messages and you reply to the email notice (instead of logging in to CC to reply to the conversation), it ends up in my Inbox. The emails are deleted straight away.

There are no moderator or administrator functions in the forum software that allow the viewing of personal conversations; there are no add-ons installed that allow me to read your personal conversations; however I do have the ability to view them in the database if I am ever required to do so by law, but thankfully in the decade I've been running CC that has yet to happen (and hopefully never will).

As to people passing on personal conversation information to other parties without permission - if you know of that happening, then please report it and I will look into it. I would take a very dim view of anyone who did so unless there were extenuating circumstances.

And moderators removing email addresses and phone numbers posted on the public forums? Well that's just common sense - unless you want more junk email or phone calls from random strangers all hours of the day or night?

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[Spiderweb]

Can someone tell me how I can send/receive private messages.
Thank you in advance.

 

[jefmcg]

Click on the name and then ....