I am splitting this topic and as a reminder: questions posted in the Mods and Admins forum that are unrelated to the current topic may have delays induced in the answer or may be not answered at all. Creating a new topic with your question avoid this situation.
As for the answer to your question: in all open source boards that are not managed by a third party (this board for example), the administrators and backup operator have access to the whole board when performing backups. Moreover the webmasters also have access to the MySQL database which contains every piece of information about the board (including passwords, pm, accounts, posts, etc). The same apply to boards that are managed by a third party (such as Ezboard, or any other board where you pay a company to administrate and update the board code in your place). However, in the later case, you will probably never meet the people who have access to such information on the board in question.
Another way to see this is to ask yourself where this information is located. Any information located on your hard drive is (unless you are hacked) only available to you and those who have a physical access to your computer. However, information such as your password or your profile is located on a server. The persons who control the server, control this information. So any Admin no matter the board should have some sort of access (direct or indirect) over the information stored on the server hosting the board.
Now to truly answer your question: as the administrators of your ISP doesn't read your emails (they certainly could!), neither do the Admins of most boards around the web (including this one) read your private messages. But let suppose that someone was massively harassing other people in private, then it would be a mistake to think that because it's private, only the poster and the receiver are able to read this data. There is as stated above direct and indirect means to access this information no matter the board used and no matter who is running the board. And if seriously pressed, an administrator can and will manage to have access to this data. In fact, every major company who are serious about their product can read and have access to anything that pass through their servers including private message, invisible forums, emails, etc (that's why when the RIAA is suing someone who shared music online, they try to force an ISP to tell them what this user have done).
Long post, but I want to make it clear that there is no need to be suspicious or thinking that this board is staffed with people have former KGB agents as their personal hero... Unless I have half of the board claiming someone is causing havoc in private (mass-spamming and such), I will not bother trying to see what you guys say behind my back
I am splitting this topic and as a reminder: questions posted in the Mods and Admins forum that are unrelated to the current topic may have delays induced in the answer or may be not answered at all. Creating a new topic with your question avoid this situation.
As for the answer to your question: in all open source boards that are not managed by a third party (this board for example), the administrators and backup operator have access to the whole board when performing backups. Moreover the webmasters also have access to the MySQL database which contains every piece of information about the board (including passwords, pm, accounts, posts, etc). The same apply to boards that are managed by a third party (such as Ezboard, or any other board where you pay a company to administrate and update the board code in your place). However, in the later case, you will probably never meet the people who have access to such information on the board in question.
Another way to see this is to ask yourself where this information is located. Any information located on your hard drive is (unless you are hacked) only available to you and those who have a physical access to your computer. However, information such as your password or your profile is located on a server. The persons who control the server, control this information. So any Admin no matter the board should have some sort of access (direct or indirect) over the information stored on the server hosting the board.
Now to truly answer your question: as the administrators of your ISP doesn't read your emails (they certainly could!), neither do the Admins of most boards around the web (including this one) read your private messages. But let suppose that someone was massively harassing other people in private, then it would be a mistake to think that because it's private, only the poster and the receiver are able to read this data. There is as stated above direct and indirect means to access this information no matter the board used and no matter who is running the board. And if seriously pressed, an administrator can and will manage to have access to this data. In fact, every major company who are serious about their product can read and have access to anything that pass through their servers including private message, invisible forums, emails, etc (that's why when the RIAA is suing someone who shared music online, they try to force an ISP to tell them what this user have done).
Long post, but I want to make it clear that there is no need to be suspicious or thinking that this board is staffed with people have former KGB agents as their personal hero... Unless I have half of the board claiming someone is causing havoc in private (mass-spamming and such), I will not bother trying to see what you guys say behind my back :wink:
