@admin

[smiffy]

Hi there Powers at Be.

Not so long ago i received some abusive PM's. From some form of human being( i think). The usual,i know you,you don't know me,i know where you stay kinda thing,hiding behind their other spineless persona.

I'm sure PM stood for Private Message,meaning messages that were private

However they seem to have been deleted from my inbox,not by myself!!! How can this be?????????????? So private messages do not exist anymore?? Maybe change to ACRYM ( Admin Can Read Yor Messages)!!

Many people conduct business or private matters on here and i for one think the above mentioned is a breach of privacy.

Look forward to your response,

Fraser Smith

[simon_doc]

As an admin of a few sites - not this one may I add - perhaps I can explain a few things.
PHPBB Overview: PHPBB does not have the facility for admin to read PM's by default through the admin panel. It can be added as a modification or of course they can be read in the sql database as all messages private or open are stored without encryption but MYSql reading can take hours as there's a lot of info to trawl through.

Responsibility and Duty of Care: The admin and server space owners have a duty of responsibility to all users of the site. This means a duty to you and make sure your experience of the site is and enjoyable one. I am sure you will understand that having the ability to police all claims of abuse is needed. If the private message system was truly private how can the admins actually do this and make sure your enjoyment and / or safety is not comprimised. Do you really think they sit there and read your PM's for the fun of it?

Automatic PM Removal: The private messages you have lost could have been removed by the system during a periodic clean up to free up space in the database and improve it's performance. Basically they could have just "dropped off the server" if they were over a certain age.
There is a save box in your private messages that can be used to save such pms that you need to keep which will not get automatically removed by any cleanup or performance improvement.

Hope this explains it a bit.
Also why did you not report the abusive messages to admin in the first place?

Simon

[Ray_Jnr]

recently the site was upgraded to phpbb3 which may have also cleaned up the database prior to the upgrade.

[(pete)]

i am a mod on difflock and its not possable for us to read or edit any thing other than the main forums

there was a warning that some of the mods passwords had been used by a person other than the mod to gain access to the mods controls and some private information was leaked

the best advise i can offer you is to change your password and check all your other in/out boxes i cant remember if you can set a time limit on how long old messages are kept but this may be worth checking too

i will bring this to the attention of the forum admin too... any more problems drop me a line via pm

[smiffy]

Only messages from one person(mr spineless) were deleted,including any traces from my sent messages( replies). Pm's prior and after offending messages still exist.

I never reported these PM's to admin,strange how thay go missing??? Almost seems that one of the Admin may know who were sending me these messages,and deleted on request. Also the certain "user/abuser name" can not be found anymore??? Along with post on main forum from user/abuser??

Looks like i must have dreamt it all...............

[RichardD]

Smiffy
In common with a lot of 'open source' forums, your own included I think, passwords etc cannot be retrieved by admins or programmers. I'm not an admin here anymore (since Simon bought me out of the business side) so I cannot say absolutely for sure but I am not aware of any upgrades that would have deleted your and only your private messages.

Can I ask why you did not contact Simon@Difflock with your enquiry?

Whilst nothing online is 100% secure, if someone had the skills and and energy to hack this forum (or any other one for that matter) then they would also have the skills to hack far more lucrative targets.

I have alerted Admin in case he's not seen your thread.

[paul_c]

[smiffy]

[(Gray)]

[RichardD]

[.]

It appears to me that this is nothing to do with Difflock but is a petty squabble between members of an off-road Club. Please keep it that way as the rest of us really aren't that interested.

[RichardD]

Fraser
I was having a bite of lunch and got to thinking - how can pm's relating only 1 user be deleted so I did a wee test ...

I created a user, went through the verification process and sent myself a pm which I then read and replied to. At that point I had one pm in each account's sent box and inbox. I then deleted the new user (using the 'delete yourself' option) and checked my inbox/sentbox etc and found that ALL the pms relating to that user had gone.

The answer to your original post is .....

When the username used to give you abuse was deleted (by the user as Difflock simply bans people to prevent the username being reused) ALL private messages relating to that username were also deleted. Admin would have been unlikely to be involved and in any case only those who know a username/password combination can read those messages.

I hope that helps.

[smiffy]

OK,thanks for your help.

Its all clear now

[RichardD]

No worries, Fraser. I learned something interesting and I'm very glad there wasn't something more sinister going on.