Privacy

[gapertimmy]

Greetings cc.com'ers-

as of late there has been some electronic rumblings and gossip chains spreading rumors that your fearless admins have been reading private messages.

 

pm's

i just wanted to set the record straight about this, and at the same time remind everyone of the nature of cc.com privacy, and for that matter, privacy on the internet as a whole.

 

first off, yes jon and i do have the ability to read private messages if we wanted to. do we? no. why? cuz 1 we don't have time for such nonsense, and 2 seeing what people post in the public forums is sometimes enough to make my stomach turn, so i dont' think i could handle the stuff that goes on behind the scenes. in all honesty though, the only time i have ever, and will ever go into the private messages is to fix problems (like we had after the past upgrade), and in situations like that, i only did so at the users request, and while i was in there, I didn't look at the message content either.

 

privacy online

as we've said from the begining, this site is not about collecting private information in any way. but a gentle reminder, the nature of communicating via this website is in no way secure. all data you post to the forums is very public, obviously, but in the same manner, an "private messages" much like the email you send is sent in plain text over the internet... anyone with some basic know how could read your "private" messages.

 

that being said, please remember that what you are saying in these private communications, and email (unless you use PGP or a similar technology) can be interecepted and read by others... so keep it clean and don't write anything that you wouldn't mind being read by others.

 

The recent worm that hit SQL database servers is a testament to the insecurity of the internet in general right now. Perhaps we have embraced the technology too quickly, or perhaps software vendors havent' taken the steps to ensure privacy, regardless, as users we need to be cognizant of the privacy issues that are still out there, and subsequently make educated decisions on how we use the internet.

 

Anyhow, hope that this post lets you sleep better tonight knowing that admins/mods don't read your prviate messages. We don't, but someone else who wants to could!

 

If you have any questions at all, you know how to reach me.

 

Keep it safe cyber kiddies-

 

Tim

 

 

[Pencil_Pusher]

So in a nutshell: everything we type here, be it in a post, in our profile or in a PM is essentially public.

--

(responding to below without adding another post)

Cool. Yeah, I wouldn't be bent out of shape knowing the two dudes that started this free website had the ability as admins to view, with discretion, PM's. I just wanted to reinforce what you were saying about being cautious on the internet. So, thumbs up for this website, J & T!

Edited February 7, 2003 by Pencil_Pusher

[jon]

Everything that you post on the forums is obviously public. Anything that is in your profile that you make public is public. Anything that is in your profile that you don't make public viewable like email addressess or whatever, as well as your private messages, are not public, BUT.......

 

You must realize, that like email, and every other form of communication on the internet, that there are people that have the capability of reading what you have written. In the case of your private messages, the only people that could read them are Tim and myself, as well as the system administrators at our webhost.

 

Personally I was kind of shocked people got so bent out of shape when they found out we could read their private messages. I figured it was kind of common knowledge since we administer the message board.

 

Hope this clears things up.