i see no real need for this
if i had concerns over PM activity, it temporarily shut down the PM system until i was sure enough that the PM activity had declined

Please keep on topic guys.

First, prove I read your private message. Secondly, I'm the administrator, I'll just delete the logs if someone starts a ruckus over it. Third, when I read PM's, I don't tell anyone.

The administrators of a forum have responsibility over how the forum operates. I feel have the ability to see everything that is ahppening with the board, including the ability to see private messages, go along with that, it will allow administrators to confirm that their forums is not being used as a message base for persons carrying on illegal / criminal activity. Having said that , administrators should never give out (except by court order) any info read in the private message area, and should include in the registration rules and faq the fact that the owners / administrators do have the ability to monitor / read private message sent on the forum, and the reasons for this as well as a privacy statement.

does it work with RC 2?

For me is very usefull believe me, I had some problems with some mods attempting to use their access for bad intentions.

See Ya

I have no true interest in my member's pm's or their content. However I was subjected to some truly nasty shutdowns and server hacks over the last few months. As I later found out...much of this was being discussed by 2 or 3 members who were in on the whole thing. So I will install the hack, and, while those particular members are gone...as least as far as I can tell :)..., if I notice a particular poster or member acting in a particular way, I will check out to whom he is pm'ing and if necessary find out what he's up to. There's too much time and money and trust involved in my board for it to be hijacked again.

You have no responsibility; responsibility is mandated by law. Your users have do have rights upheld in law. Unless you take the actions suggested above, you open yourself up to a lawsuit that can result in loosing everything you own, not to mention the posibility of criminal prosecution.

Here's the bottom line. Regardless of what you think, your forum is not your own. You are entitled to the software, but not the contents of the database. Those belong to the individual users. Believe it or not, even their own paswords are considered intellectual property. You should read about how one of the pioneers of Perl, Tom Christiansen, nearly went to jail.

ill add something about this in the terms of service section, noone reads that anyways ;)
i had a problem with a user advertising like crazy through pm's and thanks to this hack on vb2.3 i got it taken care of, so this will be useful

Well here is something that I think might help. Have a click through page that has a disclaimer about PMs not really being private and can be monitored for the general safely of the board and the users on the board.

Yes this could be a real pain for those that spend more time using the PMs than the board itself. It can even be an option that each user can turn off in their profile, but also by doing that they agree to the use of the PM system.

I think "private" in the PM leads many people to think they are truely private.