This is an aside but I’ve heard that private IM’s are being read and passed around between individuals.
I didn’t know what to make of this information, I haven’t seen this happen, nor have I heard of this outside of that conversation so I haven’t pursued it any further.
I suspect that it is either the sender or receiver that is send around PM’s… if it is actually being done… and not just a rumor.
It is possible for Admins to do, but there are no recent log records of anyone having done so.
The system logs if a admin looks at member’s PMs? I wouldn’t think an observation would be logged, rather I would expect actions to be logged.
Admins have to “impersonate” a member to see their PM’s. That action is logged.
That’s not true, go to Dallas Makerspace Talk with your ADM account.
I can not only see all of my PMs, but there’s no event log in the admin console…
I guess we need to add a couple more things to the BoD agenda for this months meeting.
For the record I’m not accusing anyone of this action but I think it’s important to think about.
I stand corrected. I didn’t even think of going that direction.
If I catch any Admin doing anything like that without a really damn good reason, I’ll remove them from Admin and ask the BoD to punish them.
I’ve done the “Impersonate” thing once, with the users permission, to track down a problem they were having. I wasn’t aware of the direct route.
That is a technical problem, and not one a BoD meeting will solve.
From the link above:
It’s a damn poor design if it’s not logged.
I’ve never done it. Just the word “impersonate” scared me off. I don’t want to know how to do it.
1 - How would you catch them? Seriously, I don’t understand if this was covered above. What’s the check on such behavior?
2 - This item/topic (admins reading PMs) came up in, and was moved from, a thread in which serious admin abuse was alleged, so…irony.
3 - We appear to have a president/director who thinks anything that isn’t specifically forbidden is therefore allowed, and that has shown a willingness to employ strongman tactics freely, so smart money says she probably wouldn’t think twice about looking at members PMs if it suited her agenda. (you know: power blahblah blah absolute power, etc.)
BTW, full disclosure, I like @kriskat, just really really really disagree with both the what and the how of what happened here.
I moved it, without evidence I do not want to suggest that any admin has been reading private messages for the sake of my agenda item. That would be misleading.
That’s the first thing that came to my mind. If there are no logs to show this has been done.
https://meta.discourse.org/t/impersonation-and-reading-private-messages/8485/11
I guess this never happened.
I’m going to investigate if there’s anyway to tell, mainly for my own curiosity.
https://meta.discourse.org/t/impersonation-and-reading-private-messages/8485/49
I’ll search for the setting…
Edit: The setting no longer exists 
While I would prefer to have private message audit capability constrained to 1-2 select individuals, and only used in the event of reasonable suspicion of impropriety (e.g., malicious, threatening or criminal behavior via private messaging), I do tend to think of DMS’ messaging tools the same way I do my work email and IM’s…namely that there should be no expectation of privacy.
That said, the notion of someone reviewing my DMS private messages and then passing them around to other individuals is troubling. Not because of what they might find (I’m incredibly boring on DMS messaging, so please go ahead and look) but because it means there’s a lack of controls in place which, if true, would make DMS look bad (subjunctive tense intentional).
Of course, this is all hypothetical…
Having only been a member since May (?) Just curious was there a forum before discourse/why was discourse picked? Not complaining about the choice purely curious.
On topic, the option for admins to be able to read private messages of users I can see being put in as a crappy solution to investigating harassment and threat claims. I’m neutral on that aspect at the moment. It is really worrisome that this rumor, whether or not it holds water doesn’t seem to have a legitimate way to be proven.