Personal Messages?
And some people like the monitor PMs to see if there is any illegal activity going on through members.
Yes. There are many valid reasons one might want to know what users are posting between each other. The folks arguing for privacy should practice it. That's fine for them. I don't normally look at members PMs - I could care less what they post, but about 2 years ago I had a need and used the old hack for vB 2.x. A member was trading in copyright documents, I caught him and booted him.
I wouldn't have even posted, but it gets old hearing the 'privacy' arguement. We're running public boards. Anyone with an expectation of total privacy in a public forum is silly. They should be getting together in a park somewhere to talk if they want absolute privacy. Even then - who knows what 'intelligence' service might be listening to their conversation in the name of 'terrorism prevention' or some such.
In addition, opposition to such a hack to read PMs suggests they cannot be read otherwise when they can be read relatively easily with any database editor or viewer. The whole 'privacy' arguement is absurd.