I have a rather odd question: Can moderators see other people's Private Messages?

[Kamex]

I know this may be a peculiar thing to ask, but my friend and I were curious since we talk mostly via PMs.

Can moderators see the contents of users' PMs?

 

[Kantomasta]

Not that i know of, but im not a mod. I know that on a game we had to send the owner(a mod) a copy of every pm we made game related. So not that i know of.

 

[Milo†icgirl McQüeen]

Only Archaic and evkl can
Others moderators can't

 

[Aelia]

IIRC, even Archaic and evkl aren't able to see PMs. I recall Archaic saying that they needed a special plug-in for vB in order to be able to see them.

 

[evkl]

That's correct, we'd need a special add-on to view people's PMs.

 

[Still Probably Modio]

Mr. Evkl, if you linked accounts with the person you wanted to read the PM of, would that work? No that I'd do that, of course. I'd be permanantley banned, and I'd SURE not want that to happen. :uhoh: even a day is too long for me. But seriously, though. As in, if a Mod did it.

 

[Ghost]

You have to know the other user's password in order to link accounts with them.

 

[Nick]

If you have permission in the admin control panel as an administrator, you can change a user's password and then check the person's messages that way. Other than that, no.

 

[Archaic]

IRL, I actually research online consumer privacy as part of my job as an academic. I take privacy issues very seriously, and it would take a very serious situation indeed for me to be convinced that prying into someone's privacy is justified. Having said that...

There is no way for anyone to read the PM's of any other user in vBulletin normally. There is a free vB mod made by a vBulletin.org community developer which allows us to hardcode specific users to be able to read other users PM's from the admin CP. This addon is not currently installed on the forum, and installing it would requirescertain permissions that only I have. I can confirm that we have used this addon on a few previous occasions. While I'd prefer not to speak about the specific events involved in each of those, suffice it to say that there's been certain allegations made in the past which we took very seriously, and which we had to investigate for the sake of our forum members safety, particularly that of some younger members. We have uninstalled the addon each time after we finished with the specific investigation at hand.

 

[Kamex]

Thank you for explaining that, Mr. Archaic. You've all been very helpful.