Hi,
If there are members who spams the board can Admin view the PM's of those members to chk and ban them.
Is it Legal?
No, if your members have an issue with a message received, they can report it to admin using the link provided.
SMF respects Privacy. I have tried it. I can never view a member's Personal Message. Just ban the spammer.
SMF-team have indicated they are absolutely against it, as they believe admins/mods don't have the right to view anyones PMs except their own. They also have closed topics where a mod or stepbystep guide has been requested which gives an indication they do not want a mod/how to for it to be posted on SMF.org
With regards to spammers, the 'Report to moderator' function in pms will reveal that individual message to the moderator so they can take appropriate action, whilst maintaining the privacy of the members other messages.
Lainaus käyttäjältä: karlbenson - tammikuu 10, 2008, 10:36:56 AP
SMF-team have indicated they are absolutely against it, as they believe admins/mods don't have the right to view anyones PMs except their own. They also have closed topics where a mod or stepbystep guide has been requested which gives an indication they do not want a mod/how to for it to be posted on SMF.org
With regards to spammers, the 'Report to moderator' function in pms will reveal that individual message to the moderator so they can take appropriate action, whilst maintaining the privacy of the members other messages.
Hi Karl,
Thanks for the reply. I know about the privacy policies of SMF but just need to clarify an issue.
If a person spams a particular website with links and topics about an other website where he is a member is there any chance of the website getting marked as Spam Site with Search Engines.
for Ex: if links of Site 'A' are posted in Site 'B' where the site 'B' is a porn site how safe is site 'A'. I feel the reputation of the site 'A' is going to get dented because of these issues.
In those cases we dont know which member is posting those links. So can we know who is doing these?
Unless the Pm's are reported. you wouldn't get to know the contents of the pms.
You can view PM in mysql database.
For example by query:
SELECT fromName, body FROM smf_personal_messages;
and google couldnt view pms anyhow :)
Lainaus käyttäjältä: karlbenson - tammikuu 10, 2008, 10:36:56 AP
SMF-team have indicated they are absolutely against it, as they believe admins/mods don't have the right to view anyones PMs except their own. They also have closed topics where a mod or stepbystep guide has been requested which gives an indication they do not want a mod/how to for it to be posted on SMF.org
With regards to spammers, the 'Report to moderator' function in pms will reveal that individual message to the moderator so they can take appropriate action, whilst maintaining the privacy of the members other messages.
The problem with the 'report to moderator' function is that most people DONT 'report to moderator' they just leave!
especially if/when the person doing the PM is someone who seems to have some authority (often due to nothing else than an inflated post count, inflated perhaps by replying to posts like these!)
your best bet is to disable PM sending until a person has a certain number of posts over a certain number of days. This makes sense,as its not too likely that a NEW member signs up and instantly starts to PM everyone
Maybe.
In my personal opinion, a bit of spam is worth it for the sake of privacy.
Although taking any action you can to mitigate spam is well worth it.
[quote author=elfishtroll link=topic=215910.msg1376784#msg1376784
your best bet is to disable PM sending until a person has a certain number of posts over a certain number of days. This makes sense,as its not too likely that a NEW member signs up and instantly starts to PM everyone
[/quote]
How to do this? How to disable sending PM until a person has a certain number of posts?
I would treat PMs as they were mail, and as such protected by law in most countries.
In Finland at least all mail (electric or not) and even text messaging is protected by law,
and even the attempt to read them without a valid reason (ie crime investigation) or other authorisation would be a crime.
If you have a problem-user, abusing the PM system, you'll propably hear about it sooner or later, but if you go around reading other people's messages without permission,
I guess you'd be the problem in the eyes of your users if they found out.
Most people do value their privacy.