How centralized is the forum concerning PMs

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

Question: When I send a pm to someone are they encrypted or can my personal messages be access by administrator?  Let say I want to have a private discussion with someone else can the messages we send to each other be accessed by administrators of forum or our messages can only be accessible if the receive makes them available.

Why I'm asking this questions, I know in some countries the government has right to access social media account of suspects etc so back to my question above.

[Qulian]

Messages are not encrypted. You should exchange GPG keys with the other person and encrypt it yourself if required

[Heisenberg_Hunter]

As the quote says " PM privacy is not guaranteed. Encrypt sensitive messages." theymos, sirius and few others can view your PM's if they really need to. If you would like to preserve your privacy better opt for PGP encryption where only you and the receiver can decrypt and view the messages. The following is an old quote about privacy and PM's. I don't know how much the regulations have been changed by theymos since then.

Global moderators can download the encrypted database backups. Admins and past admins (Gavin, Satoshi, Sirius, me, and now justmoon) can decrypt them -- they therefore have complete access to the database and can read PMs, etc. Justmoon and I can also query the live database.

Once back in 2014, theymos received a subpoena for the DPR case to release the deleted posts and PMs (though not really sure of the latter). But on whole, admins can view your PM if you didn't use PGP/GPG. Also note that, if your account has been hacked on rare cases, the hacker can read your PMs if they are not encrypted. Hence, you should use a encryption if you are dealing with the member personally. PMs are removed from the database only if both the sender and receiver deletes them. But, the DB is being backed up daily hence your PMs stay in the encrypted backups and those can be downloaded by global mods and admins.

[The Cryptovator]

I am not sure, but I think admin can access your PM's if really necessary. Mod are not able to view your PM unless receiver/sender never use report to moderator button.. Correct me if I am wrong. I believe that even you delete message admin could retrieve it same like post / reply.

[Jet Cash]

I doubt if Theymos is interested in your messages, but Microsoft and Google are. You can bet they analyse every word to build a profile of you.

I have some email addresses to which I send arse licking pro globalist message, I just want to confuse them about my motives in life.

[S_Therapist]

Once back in 2014, theymos received a subpoena for the DPR case to release the deleted posts and PMs (though not really sure of the latter).

Theymos can access users PMs but like as others mentioned, he will not check PMs until users have done something extreme. I have read somewhere theymos to say something like, "I don't read anyone's PM unless it is necessary. I have once provided some PMs for the requirement of FBI (Or something same) for an investigation."
I can't find that post though.

this is one, searching the other one-

I don't read PMs for fun. Very very rarely, I need to read PMs for technical, administrative, or legal reasons, but I try to avoid this as much as possible. I don't want to spy on anyone's personal business.

Update- Didn't find the one I am searching  

this post?:

Nah, it was close enough what I said.

[Onuohakk]

If my memory serves me correct Mark Zuckerberg the creator of facebook faced the charges of infiltrating it's users private message and in a way sending them advert as to regards what the are interested.

In my own opinion for safety reasons moderators can have the right to see your private messages but not to use it to there favour or against you

[Lauda]

The administration, Cloudflare, and the host provider have complete access to all PMs. All it takes is a simple request from the US government and one of those three will have to provide them. Deleting messages does not help as they are periodically backed up.

Correct me if I am wrong. I believe that even you delete message admin could retrieve it same like post / reply.

Difficult, but possible (see last sentence in previous paragraph).

[LoyceV]

I know in some countries the government has right to access social media account of suspects

"Some countries" don't have power over theymos. As far as I know, he lives and runs this server in the US.

For instance, when it comes to Europa, theymos wrote this:

I intend to ignore all stupidity coming out of the EUSSR.

If I recall correctly, you live in Nigeria. I don't think theymos will be very cooperative to the Nigerian government.

This may interest you too:

The security implications are that Cloudflare can read everything you send to or receive from the server, including your cleartext password and any PMs you send or look at. They can't access the database arbitrarily, though: they can only see data that passes over the Internet.

What I meant is that Cloudflare can see your unencrypted password when you log in. It's still encrypted from the real server to Cloudflare and from Cloudflare to you. So it's not blatantly insecure except in that Cloudflare is very probably an NSA honeypot, and it's not like the NSA is going to steal your password in order to scam people on bitcointalk.org or anything. If you use PGP for important communications and use a unique password, then IMO this addresses the plausible attacks well enough.

[khaled0111]

...
I have read somewhere theymos to say something like, "I don't read anyone's PM unless it is necessary. I have once provided some PMs for the requirement of FBI (Or something same) for an investigation."
I can't find that post though.
...
Update- Didn't find the one I am searching 

this post?:

This is not very surprising/interesting, but I thought I'd mention that I received a subpoena for information related to Ross Ulbricht's alleged forum account altoid. I mostly just compiled some publicly-available information. The only non-public data I had to include were some deleted posts in the heroin store topic that were not written by DPR and probably won't be useful in the case.

You might be surprised to learn that this is the first subpoena I've received for the forum.

[madnessteat]

I think that no one is interested in reading your PM. theymos didn't even read Satoshi Nakamoto's PM.

(I still haven't read the PMs, BTW; maybe they're all really boring.)

I think that your PM may only require a court decision.