[Mark.B]

Originally Posted by ProSportsForums

There is but I refuse to post it. If you don't trust members to use private messaging you should disable it rather than violating their privacy. Once it's known you read private messages your site will take a massive hit in membership and traffic.

That stance isn't helpful and it comes up every time someone asks this question. A lot of sites make this clear and indeed sites like my own expressly renamed 'Private Messaging' to 'Personal Messaging'.

It isn't about spying on users, it's about users understanding that PMs are just text entries in a database - anyone with database access can read them.

On my site a PM is merely a conversation that is not designed for the entire forum to read. If you make a post or send a message then believe it can be read by the site staff. That is also how I view PMs on ANY website I visit - the owner promising not to read anything even though he can is no privacy at all.

If users wish to state something in privacy, they should use email, and ideally encrypted email at that if genuine privacy is what they want.

http://www.bowlandcentral.com/forum/pm_policy.php?