Ron Earp
Admin
A forum member recently emailed me and asked me who, besides himself, could read private messages. It seems that another member on the forum told him that others could read his messages. I'd like to set that matter to rest - nobody, including the admins (me, Al, Lynn, Paul), can read your private messages on this forum unless you allow it and allow an admin rights to do so.
An admin (but not a regular user) could login as you and read your private messages, but to do that the admin would have to change your password. Even admins cannot ever see what your password is on the forum. If I were to follow this procedure to read another member's private messages that user would be alerted that his password was changed and the event would be logged in the activity log. Bear in mind, I nor any of the other admins, care to read your private messages and we don't read them.
Now, there is one way that an admin could see a private message you wrote by accident, but, it is due to the member doing something they shouldn't do. If you get a private message on the forum and you have email notification turned on, then you can cause this to happen inadvertently. The email notifying you that you have a private message says the following right at the top:
DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL!
***************************
But, if you do reply to the email notification then the email will go into the GT40s.com domain email, and, it'll end up coming to my administrator account dead letter office. I don't read those, but nonetheless that is the only way I can see that someone (admins only) could see a part of a private message you have written.
There might be some hacks that I am unaware of that would allow a hacker to get into our system, but we do updates and security checks to prevent this. So far I've not heard of it happening. I know of no way a normal user can see another's private messages.
In any event, the forum Private Message system is probably safer than your own email account since the Private Message doesn't travel anywhere on the internet, it stays on this server. I just wanted to let folks know that as far as I'm aware nobody can read other member's Private Messages on the forum. If a member suspects this or knows of it happening please let me know.
Thanks,
Ron
An admin (but not a regular user) could login as you and read your private messages, but to do that the admin would have to change your password. Even admins cannot ever see what your password is on the forum. If I were to follow this procedure to read another member's private messages that user would be alerted that his password was changed and the event would be logged in the activity log. Bear in mind, I nor any of the other admins, care to read your private messages and we don't read them.
Now, there is one way that an admin could see a private message you wrote by accident, but, it is due to the member doing something they shouldn't do. If you get a private message on the forum and you have email notification turned on, then you can cause this to happen inadvertently. The email notifying you that you have a private message says the following right at the top:
DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL!
***************************
But, if you do reply to the email notification then the email will go into the GT40s.com domain email, and, it'll end up coming to my administrator account dead letter office. I don't read those, but nonetheless that is the only way I can see that someone (admins only) could see a part of a private message you have written.
There might be some hacks that I am unaware of that would allow a hacker to get into our system, but we do updates and security checks to prevent this. So far I've not heard of it happening. I know of no way a normal user can see another's private messages.
In any event, the forum Private Message system is probably safer than your own email account since the Private Message doesn't travel anywhere on the internet, it stays on this server. I just wanted to let folks know that as far as I'm aware nobody can read other member's Private Messages on the forum. If a member suspects this or knows of it happening please let me know.
Thanks,
Ron