Are "conversations" private?

judypilot

judypilot

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Judy Parrish
I wanted to send a private message to someone, and found "conversations", but it's not obvious they are private. Are they?
 
judypilot said:
I wanted to send a private message to someone, and found "conversations", but it's not obvious they are private. Are they?
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Judy, Ryan says they are private here, and I have no reason to doubt him. But admins come and go, and the next may not feel the same way as Ryan or this management council. My suggestion is that you make contact through PM with out disclosing anything, then take it to email, or better yet, an app like Signal if you want it truly private.

I did a quick google search, and came up with this thread. Draw your own conclusions as to whether Xenforo is secure enough for you.

PMs - Private or Not? | Admin Talk Forums (admin-talk.com)
 
luvflyin said:
We could expirement. I could send you a PM saying enough stuff that could get me banned for life. Maybe even ‘life’:eek2: Maybe we could find out if…..
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Nah, they'd let that pass in order to sucker others in...
 
judypilot said:
I wanted to send a private message to someone, and found "conversations", but it's not obvious they are private. Are they?
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Define "private".

eman1200 said:
just watch out........private messages in the group chat are viewable by the mods.............as I found out the hard way.
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^ This, at a minimum.


Anyone with access to the database, authorized or not, will be able to see them. Does that help?
 
wayne said:
...Anyone with access to the database, authorized or not, will be able to see them. Does that help?
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well this was completely different. one you have to go searching for (your situation), the other was right there plain as day, they didn't have to go searching for them. but apparently that's been 'fixed' and isn't the case any more.
 
The private messages in the Chat Room that @eman1200 is referring to, were known as ‘whispers’. They were visible to the moderators, however; that feature has since been removed and there’s now a true private conversations function.
 
If you trust your admins, they are private. I run several XF sites and one of the things I instill on my admins is that they will be kicked off the site entirely if I find they've dug into areas that have an illusion of privacy. This includes the XF Conversations and private forums that they aren't authorized for.
 
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judypilot said:
I wanted to send a private message to someone, and found "conversations", but it's not obvious they are private. Are they?
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It's technology. Nothing you send over the wire is private.

However, it would take enough effort here to pry into a private conversation, that nobody is going to make the effort without a serious incentive.

Send your award-winning bundt cake recipes with confidence. Keep those bitcoin private keys on a paper wallet. :)
 
Gee, I didn't mean to start anything. The messages I want to send privately are just to avoid launching irrelevant forum discussions, not anything I wouldn't want to actually be public. I never say online anything I wouldn't be willing to say to someone's face in the hearing of others. That should actually be the ethic all social media users should follow. If people would just realize there are actually living, breathing human beings they're communicating with, maybe social media wouldn't be so poisonous.
 
I've been a moderator on a couple of forums. I doubt the mods have the time or the desire to dig into private messages even if they could.
 
Moderators cannot see conversations, but administrators with database access can... but as Timbeck said it's highly doubtful they'd bother without a really good reason, like a court order or something.
 
Dana said:
Moderators cannot see conversations, but administrators with database access can...
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That's true for the naked XenForo but there are a few addons that can break that. The most common one (don't know if POA uses it, but my site has it) called "Login as User" allows an admin to pretend to be a user and do whatever they can do.

Of course, I've told my admins that reading conversations and other things meant to be private is grounds for immediate termination from the entire site.
 
judypilot said:
If people would just realize there are actually living, breathing human beings they're communicating with, maybe social media wouldn't be so poisonous.
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You may have just unlocked the secret to happiness in this life.
 
azpilot said:
You may have just unlocked the secret to happiness in this life.
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Oh absolutely. For awhile, I participated in a Facebook group related to my profession. There is such a strong tendency to read the worst possible interpretation into someone's post that it's beyond ridiculous. It's lash out first and ask question later (if at all), and forget trying to apologize--it just engenders more condemnation. I finally left the group, I was so disgusted, and I'm not the only one. Interestingly, the divide between people who do the lashing and those who are lashed is partly generational (you can guess which generation does the lashing). The really sad thing? The people who are lashing out are junior in the field and those who are leaving are senior, and in positions to really help the junior ones professionally. Needless to day we are disinclined to do so.
 
The Facebook groups that I am on (none having to do with my former profession) seem very strongly moderated. More so than here. I think it just depends on the group.
 
Everskyward said:
The Facebook groups that I am on (none having to do with my former profession) seem very strongly moderated. More so than here. I think it just depends on the group.
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The Facebook groups I'm on all involve Tortoises, Origami, Sourdough bread and Mooneys. Nobody really gets bent out of shape about anything. Actually, I did the other day. Someone had a video of there dog right next to their tortoise. I've seen photos of tortoises mangled by other household pets and have been a vocal proponent of keeping the two well separated. I got shouted down and said goodbye.

By the way, I have a little redfoot tortoise available for rehoming if anyone's interested...
 
flyingron said:
That's true for the naked XenForo but there are a few addons that can break that. The most common one (don't know if POA uses it, but my site has it) called "Login as User" allows an admin to pretend to be a user and do whatever they can do.

Of course, I've told my admins that reading conversations and other things meant to be private is grounds for immediate termination from the entire site.
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Is there any use of that feature that would not result in termination?
 
Jeff Oslick said:
I figure the NSA has all of it stored on a server in Utah, and backed up to a site none of us have ever heard of.
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A few years back there was an article in "Wired " Magazine about that site.
Every electronic communication can be viewed and tracked.
I would guess that algorithms are used to pick words in communications to be checked on.
Impressive site, not far from prison.
 
Palmpilot said:
Is there any use of that feature that would not result in termination?
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Speaking as a computer admin-type person in general, but not specific to web forums, the most common use of that feature is when a user says "this thing isn't working." If you can log in as them and try "this thing" yourself, it's much easier to get live log messages to narrow down the weird edge case for why feature X isn't working for user account Y.
 
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