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Firstly, I'm not going to directly crap-talk another website, so they shall go unnamed. That being said, I had something happen recently that is rather disturbing to the point where I am considering leaving their forum.

In their version of the off-topic forum we were in a discussion about certain banned-topics here on dakka. A Mod that was in this debate threw a low-blow insult. I instantly realized that this person should have NO knowledge of what they stated, as I had never mentioned these details openly in their forum (namely details about my brother's cancer treatments). The ONLY time I had mentioned it there was in a Private Message to another user who's spouse was also being treated. That other user also caught onto this. Said Mod was called out, denied the allegations, and then finally admitted to snooping into our Private Messages. The Admin not only didn't have a problem with this, but they also backed the Mod. The justification was that they periodically do it for the greater good of the forum.

This admission has caused a bit of a ruckus, and several members have stated their intentions to leave and not return. I'm thinking I'll do the same, but when it comes to extremely niche hobbies finding a dedicated forum with any activity is hard to find.


So people, in your opinions is this type of action ever justifiable?

Ever justifiable? Yes in some cases. If as part of their modding they needed to check. E.g. a user is getting unwanted/harassing messages from another user in PMs, the mods might have to check to make sure it’s happening before banning someone. If not it’s he said/she said, who do you believe?

Or if you had legitimate suspicions of actual lawbreaking going on, and needed to make sure your site was not involved in unwanted activities that might get it shut down.

So I can think of a few reasons where a mod would need to snoop. But that’s brainstorming for cases. IMHO it should never be casually done, or done without a legitimate reason.

Sort of like a landlord can’t just stroll into your apartment whenever they feel like it. But it is their property, and they have rights to enter the space under certain circumstances.

Message boards are someone else’s house. I think there is the expectation of privacy in PMs, but not technically a requirement. I would view casual or routine invasion a violation of trust, and it would sour me on the site. Enought to walk away? Maybe not. But I’d be very careful about what I’d post, and assume nothing was secure or safe.

Time to send PMs recounting how you seduced that mod’s partner.

Theoretically a mod can access your messages without much reason, but this would be overstepping for sure.
There isn’t any reason, and shouldn’t be brought up even if a mod has had to look for legitimate reasons as the information shouldn’t be shared with users.


But there is some irony.

Mods having access to PMs is understandable, in case of things being reported that need to be looked into.

Mods randomly deciding to go snooping, on the other hand, is not justified, and should be seen as a breach of trust.

Could be a breach of GDPR, or local equivalent.

At work, I can in theory review any case file. Certainly I’ve access to restricted cases many colleagues do not. But? I can only do so with legitimate reasoning.

For instance, a given issue may span two or more cases. So before I take the linked ones on, I first need to review the existing files to figure out what’s what.

Similarly, I may need to check for duplicate cases. Or to help build a background of behaviour etc.

But if I’m just being nosey? Yeah that’s a sackable offence. And rightly so.

I'll echo its certainly a power they need to have to do their job, but just snooping around is definitely an abuse of the power and an admin or owner with any integrity should have canned them over that.

I agree that essentially they need to have that ability to properly run a forum. But it should be used very sparingly.

A lot of communities with mods decay over time as the moderation becomes out of touch and draconian. No community is going to be perfect in this regard. I've left fora before because of their draconian mod policies. These days I'm so boring I don't even get modded often, but seeing other people getting slammed for incredibly minor stuff is now enough to make me feel uncomfortable and leave.

In your case I'd definitely pull back from that forum. It's sad but there's just no point if someone is throwing stuff like that at you.

Most default forum software is designed so that mods can't just go snooping at private messages anyway - even admin often have to jump through a lot of hoops or its all encrypted and such.
I've moderated/admined on several forums over the years and never had any private message access that wasn't a copy of a message sent by a recipient of the message within the report system

When reports happen its often where the internal system sends a copy of the chat history within the reported message, thus letting the mod see into the message but not see outside of that reported message (which is why you don't delete private messages on a forum/website if you ever feel like you might have to report them later or if its sensitive - like a trade deal - until its concluded so that you'd have the message history to report).


A mod just reading private messages at random would 100% be a breach of trust and, as noted above, likely also a breach of data protection laws.

Honestly its 100% a reason I would leave a forum over. It's not something that moderator should have free access too and honestly not something they should be snooping through at random anyway - for just the reason as shown above where a mod abused that privilege for a public insult.


Heck on most websites it would be the kind of thing that sees a huge walkout in general if it were publicly revealed.

 cuda1179 wrote:
Firstly, I'm not going to directly crap-talk another website, so they shall go unnamed. That being said, I had something happen recently that is rather disturbing to the point where I am considering leaving their forum.

In their version of the off-topic forum we were in a discussion about certain banned-topics here on dakka. A Mod that was in this debate threw a low-blow insult. I instantly realized that this person should have NO knowledge of what they stated, as I had never mentioned these details openly in their forum (namely details about my brother's cancer treatments). The ONLY time I had mentioned it there was in a Private Message to another user who's spouse was also being treated. That other user also caught onto this. Said Mod was called out, denied the allegations, and then finally admitted to snooping into our Private Messages. The Admin not only didn't have a problem with this, but they also backed the Mod. The justification was that they periodically do it for the greater good of the forum.

This admission has caused a bit of a ruckus, and several members have stated their intentions to leave and not return. I'm thinking I'll do the same, but when it comes to extremely niche hobbies finding a dedicated forum with any activity is hard to find.


So people, in your opinions is this type of action ever justifiable?

Short answer No.

Ethical Answer: The correct ammount and type of words used to describe the ethical underdevelopment of said mod and admin would lead to a ban of my account .

Legal Answer: This could potentially have ramifications.

As a MOD here I can say for certain that we do not have access to users PMs and we wouldn't want it either, we all have enough to deal with without snooping through people's messages.
The Admins can theoretically access people's messages but I have never heard of them doing so and I have read every single user case file here.

If I was on a site that allowed the admin team to do that it wouldn't be for very long, that is outrageous.

I can see cases where it might be needed - people sending nasty stuff through PMs and so on. But yeah I'd expect it to be admin only rather than moderator I suppose - but on small sites there's not much difference.

I'm generally of the view these days that nothing on the internet is private, and keep things that are private either inside my own head or limited to in person conversations.

Dakka is one of the last places I actually post anything at all, and mostly just because I've been here for such a long time.