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[Forum Admin]

PRIVATE MESSAGES
It is so important to you as a member to understand the privacy issues surrounding passwords as a direct lead in to this topic.  The Private Message Facility (PM) is directly tied to your member account.  We (Forum Admin) nor any Moderators have an administrative function that allows us to access a member's PM.  We have no other method to see PMs other than to sign on to an account and read them as you do.  If we do not have your password, we cannot read your PMs.  As stated above, we do not have ways to guess at an ENCRYPTED password.  Also, as stated above, if we were to alter your password to read your PMs, we would have no way to set it back so that you would be unaware of what happened.

There is one exception that came to light during a recent incident. A member who has their account terminated or asks that it be closed is no longer recognized as a member of this Forum and does not have the same rights guaranteed to an active member in good standing.  This is exactly what happened in that incident.  As stated above, the account in question had its password changed to XXXX so that it could no longer be used by that member. In an effort to verify that the intended blocking action was successful, we tested the terminated account with the new password.  Upon doing so, we were immediately greeted with a pop up screen saying that there were new messages waiting.  These messages were read since they did not violate the rights of any active member.  We were not sneaking into a PM file.  We were not going to try to restore the password so that we would not be caught.  We were taking necessary administrative action.

WE DO NOT HAVE THE ABILITY, THE TIME, THE INTEREST OR THE DESIRE TO READ PMs OF ANY ACTIVE MEMBER'S ACCOUNT AND WE DO NOT TRY IN ANY WAY TO DO SO.

As a Just Registered Member we have put in the pre-requesite of not being able to start your own Topic or use the private messaging (PM) function until you have REPLIED to other topics 5 times. This is due to people who want nothing better than to spam our members in PM's.  
You may post in any room under NEW MEMBERS or if in crisis, start your own topic in Members Needing Extra Support Now.

Thank you.