Question on how to prevent
 

Users from seeing threads that have been moved to an area off limits to them. I have old threads, closed threads, etc moved to an area that only Admins can see.

But a user has been seen in that area so I tested it as a plain user, knew the url to a thread that was closed and it let me in.

HOW can I prevent that from happening other than deleting threads?

TIA

Take a look at your forum permissions for that forum. You should have hit Deny All for that forum and then only changed it for the usergroups allowed to see it.

That was already done when that forum was created and again after all the posts were moved into it. And users can still get in

If permissions are set not to allow users to view the threads, then they can't.

That's just it - they can! My admins have seen 2 people reply to threads that have been placed into the Archived area. Those users do NOT have access to that area as they are not admins and yet they've replied to threads in there. Granted they can't click to go into anything else in there.

Could a subscription to threads override that?

No a subscription can not override. Check your Usergroup permission, the user must be in a usergroup that has permission.

PS Are you sure they succeeded in responding? Maybe they where just watching a No Permission page?

I've checked permissions at least a dozen times already - they do not have permissions to get into that and there weren't any access masks bypassing them either but they were in the thread w/o a No Permission sign and were even able to reply to it!

Please open a support ticket.

If you can do that in the next 10 minutes, then please put "FAO: Marco" in the title and i will have a look myself. Please include access details to your AdminCP in the sensitive box of the ticket. Also include a link to the user profile in question.