plugin to read members private messages

[Heidi Mull]

Admins/forum owners do have the ability to read private messages, but without the plugin you usually have to go through the backend to see it. In fact, if you know how to navigate the inner bowels of a forum, you can even see exactly what pages each member viewed and when.

In fact, at the time - and this was VBulletin YEARS ago, I hope they've changed it since - you could even see a member's password.

I learned all this back when I took over ownership of a mostly dead forum and was poking around to learn how everything worked. Scared the crap out of me.

That said, it did become important to be able to read PMs when one member claimed sexual harassment via PM. With the agreement from everyone on the moderating team, we read other PMs by the member in question to determine whether or not it was an isolated incident. As it was a forum geared towards teenagers, we felt it was necessary to treat the matter with abundant precaution.

As someone who has been on many forums, I tend to assume that private messages are never fully private from those in charge. If I want them to be, then I take the communication off forum.