Protect the little ones, PM control

[Inflame]

Heya all,

It's nearly every month in the news that adults contact younger people to have a 'nice little chat'
This chat will mostly result in abuse of this younger girl/boy on sexual terrain.

We can not deny that even SMF forums could be used by these people, so I think it's time to have a better protection system on it

Yes of course there is a "report to admin" button, but not everyone dares to click it,

So well after a long story, this is my idea:

To have every PM checked sent by an user, on specific words like "sex, naked, horny" etc. etc. you know this point,
If a PM contains this word, do not drop it, but send an alert message to the admin(s) containing the information:
- Message Body
- Sender
- Sender's IP
- and anything useful at that moment.

So that if anyone approaches someone to have sexual message's, it will be noticed right away,

I think some would say I am wining about nothing, but in my eyes it's very important, I know from nearby friends that these kinds of things can lead to suicide, or attempts to

We are not responsible for that, but we could try to prevent most of it!

Thank you all

[Peter Duggan]

Why not just disable PMs altogether (which you can already do)?

[Inflame]

Why not just disable PMs altogether (which you can already do)?

No that's not an option,

This mod should prevent these kind of problems, but to disable PM is rubbish

[NEMINI]

people will just use words you don't filter, or misspell them, or put them in code tags or 100 different ways just like the word censors or most forums get bypassed daily.

[Peter Duggan]

but to disable PM is rubbish

It's a sensible solution if you need it!

[anunlike]

What about adults who use the same specific words? I wouldn't like knowing that if I talk about sex, for example, to another adult that it's likely it'll be read by an admin (or whoever).

[Inflame]

What about adults who use the same specific words? I wouldn't like knowing that if I talk about sex, for example, to another adult that it's likely it'll be read by an admin (or whoever).

Well I have to admit you got a pretty good point there

I suppose this topic can be closed, by the fact the idea stinks

[anunlike]

IMO, the basic idea is good. It just seems a lot more difficult to implement specific words as triggers for reporting a PM when it could be a sign of something bad going on, but still implementing specific words to not be triggers for reporting a PM when nothing bad is going on. You can't tell which it is until you read the PM, but if you've read someone's PMs and nothing bad is going on, you've violated their privacy.

IMO, there's risk on both sides. You can say the word "sex" is trigger word and that could allow you to snoop around any PM with that word in it and it very well could let you prevent / stop an adult from sexually exploiting a minor. But the risk, on the other side, is that any person that mentions "sex" is going have you going through their PMs. You just have to weight the risks, IMO.

Personally, I wouldn't use PMs if I knew someone could read them like that. I always default to the 'privacy side'.

[Inflame]

IMO, the basic idea is good. It just seems a lot more difficult to implement specific words as triggers for reporting a PM when it could be a sign of something bad going on, but still implementing specific words to not be triggers for reporting a PM when nothing bad is going on. You can't tell which it is until you read the PM, but if you've read someone's PMs and nothing bad is going on, you've violated their privacy.

IMO, there's risk on both sides. You can say the word "sex" is trigger word and that could allow you to snoop around any PM with that word in it and it very well could let you prevent / stop an adult from sexually exploiting a minor. But the risk, on the other side, is that any person that mentions "sex" is going have you going through their PMs. You just have to weight the risks, IMO.

Personally, I wouldn't use PMs if I knew someone could read them like that. I always default to the 'privacy side'.

You have a good point

Persons don't know that admins can read every message sent, for those which didn't know yet, you can easy check out the database and read any message sent (Nice he someone which pays attention )

I would put minor protection higher than privacy, but well I think the words sex are used many times in PM's, A solution could be to that if the words are used twice or more there will be an alert sent, maybe better?

I think it's good to not inform any user about it, so they will not try to avoid this system,


But I think the most important thing is to keep in mind why we try this,
the protection of minor, and the costs of preventing these problems can not beat member privacy,

One way to work around it is to ask for someone's MSN right away, on that way we can not help anyone, but at least we try it.

I don't want to give anyone guilt, but I see it as a duty of us as admins, we are responsible for the things happening at our domains, at our forums, and I want to take that responsibility as much as possible.

[NEMINI]

I think PM's should be encrypted so no one can read then but the intended people.  Policing on the off chance something maybe might could possibly be bad is ridiculous, IMO.  People need to watch out for themselves.  Crap happens, welcome to life.  If a person has a problem they can report it, put the user on the ignore list, or if they are that fearful, don't check PM's except for from known sources (ie: just like email).

[Isaac]

I'd like to see this.  It would be useful to help detect people who are advertising the competition via PMs, which is something I sure could use on one of my forums. 

[Inflame]

You should seek for some PM options included at SMF, like how many posts you should have before sending PM, etc. think you can block it with that.

But to get to the technical stuff,
How plausible is it that this mod will work good for it's target to reach?

And will it work really?


I'm glad at least people share their opinion about this