Forum PM Privacy

[Little Mouse]

People tagged other if they share/public their private PM which may contain confidential information. I would also hate to see someone sharing a private PM to the public if I wanted to share that information with only a few people.
But what if the PM includes offering of illegal trade regarding forum. It can be an offer to buy/sell account, or to trade merit. Should this type of PM be made public? I think yes but still looking for community response. Someone I know have been offered for such trades from a number of members.

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[isaac_clarke22]

Yes, especially that you mentioned about "illegal trades regarding forum".
Even though the user can just be tagged directly with a feedback of "offers to trade merits/buy/sell accounts through PM", there are chances that a non-DT member would come across users like this and their feedback wouldn't be directly visible to many users.

People tagged other if they share/public their private PM which may contain confidential information. I would also hate to see someone sharing a private PM to the public if I wanted to share that information with only a few people.

If it contains sensitive information, just encrypt it just like the note says before sending a PM/DM

Note: PM privacy is not guaranteed. Encrypt sensitive messages.

[Quickseller]

A personal message is a way for you to send a message to a specific person. It is in no way a private message. This means the content can potentially be disclosed to anyone that is interested in the message.
 
The new forum has a specific requirement that the end user have the ability to share the contents of a PM with other forum users via a link. Only one user would need to consent in order for the M to be disclosed.

[Shamm]

But what if the PM includes offering of illegal trade regarding forum. It can be an offer to buy/sell account, or to trade merit. Should this type of PM be made public?

If I were in your situation I have two options Post it in public inorder to be aware all user here in forum if it's against the rules and regulations in Forum. Cause If I don't do it, for sure he/she will persue his/her strategy and more user got the same message
or I will report it in admin so that they can take an action about this kind of situation.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Posting of PMs might be in breach of forum etiquette, but it's not against the rules (if I'm not mistaken), nor is it something someone should tag someone else for--unless, of course, that PM contained something that was agreed wouldn't be shared or has doxxing info in it, etc.

I've published PMs by shitposters begging to get their negative feedback removed before, and I probably shouldn't have done that and haven't done it since.  However, if you send a PM to anyone here, you'd do well to not write anything you absolutely wouldn't want public, because you have no idea what the receiver of the PM is going to do.  There's no right to privacy as far as those PMs are concerned, whether you like it or not.

If someone offers you some sort of illegal trade via PM, your best bet would be to report it to the mods.  If it's from an established member with a reputation, that's a bit tricky.  The community might need to know about stuff like that, depending on what the offer was.

[GeorgeJohn]

A personal message is a way for you to send a message to a specific person. It is in no way a private message.

A Pm message should be a private message between you and whoever the message is directing to, because it's confidential message which is important to the sender and might be of no value to the recipient base on the content of the message, and assuming it's not confidential it would have made open for everyone to see and also engage in the conversation that supposed to be made secret, so I'm astonished when you said that a pm is not a private. So i want to know at least two cogent reasons while a private message is not [ private]

This means the content can potentially be disclosed to anyone that is interested in the message.

So in this aspect of point, i will say that if anyone disclose a private message betweens both of you through a link or quote and make it public, their is atoms or an elements that is behind it, indecencies that they is collision between both parties or an argument that requires evidence to be proven that such conversation actually happened or took place, but that doesn't mean that it not a private message because at the period the chat took place it wasn't reviewed and made obvious to the public instantly.

[mindrust]

People tagged other if they share/public their private PM which may contain confidential information. I would also hate to see someone sharing a private PM to the public if I wanted to share that information with only a few people.
But what if the PM includes offering of illegal trade regarding forum. It can be an offer to buy/sell account, or to trade merit. Should this type of PM be made public? I think yes but still looking for community response. Someone I know have been offered for such trades from a number of members.

In this situation it is best to ignore it I think.

If you reveal the PM's, you risk your own account. The guy who offered you a trade would get a negative rating too probably but this is a private conservation and I don't think anybody needs to know about it unless it is a crime. By "crime" I mean some serious shit like CP, drugs etc, even then we don't really need to know about it. You can directly report the account to the police.

[aoluain]

Hmm interesting question,

But what if the PM includes offering of illegal trade regarding forum

I'm taking the question as selling accounts or merit swapping as the OP posted,
these two actions are hardly life threatening, I would agree with Lucius, just ignore the proposition.

If the requests become persistent then its definitely a case of reporting it.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>

On the forum, PMs are described as "Personal Messaging", as opposed to "Private Messaging" to which the acronym PM often refers to. I don't know if people make a technical differentiation based on semantics. I don't. Regardless, in either case, I’d personally consider them something that I’d not disclose, lest there be something really extremely grave enclosed (that does not mean it should go public either).

Account sales do not fall under that prism of a grave matter in my opinion, although I do recall seeing some related PMs disclosed from time to time (i.e. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5188770.0 for example). It could easily warrant though a report to moderators for unsolicited PM spam, and some may even deem the Sender worthy of some kind of tagging as was discussed here yesterday (although pointing to the evidence would require disclosing the PM, which is a kind of catch 22).

There is, of course, no guarantee that the PMs won’t be disclosed, and that is something the sender should obviously take into account. PMs are not sworn to attorney nor clerical secrecy, but rather to what one considers to be rightfull, and probably self-restricted additionally in the eye of the expected community's reaction to unveiling a PM's content.

[The Cryptovator]

Publishing PM in public fully depends on the situation are you facing. PM with private information including but not limited to name,  address, or identity shouldn't post in public. A person who wants to trade with you really doesn't make sense to post in public. Either you should ignore or proceed if the deal isn't against forum rules or not against community standards. You can report admin if you receive a PM that is against the forum. You can post PM publicly if it's against community standards (like a scam). You shouldn't post PM publicly if the message included not to share with a third party.

However, I do not support tagging anyone for posting PM publicly.

[Upgrade00]

The point of posting PMs publicly is sort of a gray area, for one; they are not accessible to the public and except you allow a trusted member access to your account to view the Pm directly, no one can verify the authenticity of your claim. So, publicly posting personal messages of itself to either expose a scan or for whatever reason doesn't do much, as it's a copy and oastevorba screenshot, both which can be easily faked.

I personally would rather not expose a PM sent to me. It's personal to me and if they wanted it public they could have made it public. If however, I'm in a situation where I have to expose a PM to indemnify myself in a situation (like if I was accused of something), I'll only bring up the part relevant to that and have someone verify it.

Randomly exposing other people's messages to you is in bad taste in my opinion. And could be worthy of a tag (maybe a neutral ones) in some situations.

[Pmalek]

A personal message is a way for you to send a message to a specific person. It is in no way a private message. This means the content can potentially be disclosed to anyone that is interested in the message.

Potato - potatoe. Whether it's private or personnel, it's still not a public message. If I send you a PM, it means that the content is something I didn't want to post for the general public to see. That's why I sent it to you and you only. Private/personnel messages that can identify a Bitcointalk user should not be made public. If the message contains something that is against the rules, you can report it, the admins will be able to see the content, and they will take the necessary steps.

If the message contains something worthy of a tag, it can be made public as proof that an individual is doing something that is frowned upon. Again, personally identifiable information should no be displayed even in that case.   

[Welsh]

The point of posting PMs publicly is sort of a gray area, for one; they are not accessible to the public and except you allow a trusted member access to your account to view the Pm directly, no one can verify the authenticity of your claim. So, publicly posting personal messages of itself to either expose a scan or for whatever reason doesn't do much, as it's a copy and oastevorba screenshot, both which can be easily faked.

I personally would rather not expose a PM sent to me. It's personal to me and if they wanted it public they could have made it public. If however, I'm in a situation where I have to expose a PM to indemnify myself in a situation (like if I was accused of something), I'll only bring up the part relevant to that and have someone verify it.

Randomly exposing other people's messages to you is in bad taste in my opinion. And could be worthy of a tag (maybe a neutral ones) in some situations.

Even then, only under excruciating circumstances I'd say releasing a personal message is the right thing to do. I wouldn't be giving anyone access to my account, regardless if they're on DefaultTrust or not. I'd much rather give them access to one personal message, instead of all my personal messages since it's almost impossible to look at your inbox, and only see one personal message due to the way they're displayed, so your unfairly exposing other users personal messages too, and of course then it's the security of your account.

Like I said only under excruciating circumstances would this be justified. Though, I also guess it depends on the context. Whatever that personal message says, might already be deemed public knowledge or something that's not considered private. Though, even then it's probably best to reference that personal message, instead of giving out personal details.

[tranthidung]

TLDR;

You can get full details officially there: https://bitcointalk.org/privacy.php

So the best practice is don't talk about things that can be used to dox you in PMs. For other PMs, you can delete them all after you finish the communication. As you can see from the privacy doc, there are different levels of destruction of PMs over time. That means you can not delete all things in the database after 1 click. It takes time.

[Upgrade00]

I wouldn't be giving anyone access to my account, regardless if they're on DefaultTrust or not. I'd much rather give them access to one personal message, instead of all my personal messages since it's almost impossible to look at your inbox, and only see one personal message due to the way they're displayed, so your unfairly exposing other users personal messages too, and of course then it's the security of your account.

Is there any way to actually allow a user access to only one personal message? I get you can report PMs and permit a mod or the admin to look at it, if that's what you mean.

Like I said only under excruciating circumstances would this be justified. Though, I also guess it depends on the context. Whatever that personal message says, might already be deemed public knowledge or something that's not considered private. Though, even then it's probably best to reference that personal message, instead of giving out personal details.

I agree that PMs are personal and should not be divulged except when absolutely necessary. I would personally not trust a user who randomly exposes what was shared privately.

[Rizzrack]

Is there any way to actually allow a user access to only one personal message? I get you can report PMs and permit a mod or the admin to look at it, if that's what you mean.

There is no way to grant access to a single PM. They only way would be if there was a "share" button and the "known forum's key" signed the content of the PM and you can copy and paste the pgp signature. But that does not exist and seems too much of a hassle for way too little benefit.

Just report the PM and admins and global mods will receive a copy of the reported PM and take action if needed. That's the best and most straightforward option.

[krishnaverma]

A personal message is a way for you to send a message to a specific person. It is in no way a private message. This means the content can potentially be disclosed to anyone that is interested in the message.
 
The new forum has a specific requirement that the end user have the ability to share the contents of a PM with other forum users via a link. Only one user would need to consent in order for the M to be disclosed.

What do you mean by the new forum here?

[skarais]

Publish a PM may not be the best way in most cases, but in certain cases I think it can be done to strengthen the evidence. So far I never thought I would do it for no apparent reason even though it's not against the rule. Under certain situation it is possible to publish a PM without publishing the sender of the PM, and I think it's the best way to keep someone's privacy if the message is an attempt to increase the knowledge of many other users. There is an option to report PM to admin if someone tries to commit scam attempts or other sensitive content, this is also the best option without needing to publish it.

[Quickseller]

A personal message is a way for you to send a message to a specific person. It is in no way a private message. This means the content can potentially be disclosed to anyone that is interested in the message.

Potato - potatoe. Whether it's private or personnel, it's still not a public message. If I send you a PM, it means that the content is something I didn't want to post for the general public to see. That's why I sent it to you and you only. Private/personnel messages that can identify a Bitcointalk user should not be made public. If the message contains something that is against the rules, you can report it, the admins will be able to see the content, and they will take the necessary steps.

If the message contains something worthy of a tag, it can be made public as proof that an individual is doing something that is frowned upon. Again, personally identifiable information should no be displayed even in that case.  

A personal message is sent directly to a specific person, while a private message is sent and is intended to be private.

There is no expectation of privacy for a personal message. It would be similar to tagging a particular person in a message. The forum will not proactively disclose the message, but either party could potentially disclose the content.

A private message on the other hand has the expectation of privacy.

edit: fixed typo

[Pmalek]

A personal message is sent directly to a specific person, while a personal message is sent and is intended to be private.

I assume this is a typo and you wanted to say that "a private message is sent and is intended to be private."
They are both sent to a specific person unless you include additional users. They are both a private means of communication up to the point that someone makes them public.

There is no expectation of privacy for a personal message. It would be similar to tagging a particular person in a message. The forum will not proactively disclose the message, but either party could potentially disclose the content.

A private message on the other hand has the expectation of privacy.

An expectation is just you believing that something will or will not happen. You expect and believe that a privately/personally sent message is supposed to stay private. They don't have to. They are private and personnel until someone makes them public.

Private or personnel message is just a name for the forum messaging feature. I would agree with you if the forum had both private and personnel messages. In that case, we would need a way to distinguish those two.
What if the on-forum messages were called Bitcointalk forum messages without mentioning the terms private or personnel? How are we supposed to look at them then?