I see nothing wrong with sharing content of personal messages with others, unless they contain some private information like email address, phone number, bank account, postal address, and something similar.
Ideally, the accepted practice should be deletion of messages with private information in, since even if you keep your account secure, and you don't plan on releasing that information, it could be compromised through other means out of your control; like the actual server being compromised. I personally, don't like the idea of keeping someone's personal data even if they've willing fully given that up. This especially rings true if you aren't going to be needing that data anyway, after completion of a successful trade.
Theymos also confirmed it's not against rules, but I would not want to see sharing personal messages in public turning into regular thing here.
If you want to share sensitive information in forum, use encryption or some other method of communication.
Yeah, not being against the rules doesn't make it right from a moral stand point. Okay, the point has been proven that they're called personal messages, and not private messages, that's correct. However, that doesn't prevent users making the assumption that the messages they sent in personal messages are to be assumed to be private. You could potentially argue that's their fault, but expecting everyone to first now how to encrypt their information, and secondly redact any personal information probably isn't the best solution. Now, when they post information publicly, they should really know that unless they're explicitly comfortable with everyone knowing it, they shouldn't do it. Personal/private messages because they're usually one on one between users, can sometimes evade people's logic about sharing personal information.
I think the only time releasing personal messages would be acceptable is if it revealed any significantly malicious users. For example, those looking to compromise or scam other users. At that point, I think they give up their benefit of the doubt about personal/private messages.
Ultimately, it comes down to personal view points. I'm against it personally, although in align with other beliefs here I don't think merely posting someone's personal message without permission is red trust worthy. I bet there's loads of instances where I, and others have paraphrased a personal message without thinking. I think if it's determined that a user released a personal message in hopes to attack an individual, that would have to be considered based on context whether or not that's a trust system issue.
Again, this ignoring that screenshots can be easily manipulated to how you want them through multiple ways. So, the only reliable way of sharing personal messages would be through allowing someone access to your account, which again opens up another can of worms.
Anyway, I've probably veered a little off topic there, probably more suited to a discussion in reputation now.
Speaking from the moral point, there was when Theymos was considering releasing Satoshi pms, but later he couldn't find it necessary again. It means Pms are private and maybe confidential.
Yeah, I remember this. I'm quite glad that theymos opted not to release them, even if they didn't have any personal data in them, which I expect they didn't.
