veiw private messages of members

New Member Joined: Feb 04, 2006 Posts: 1

im positive i had a forums mod that would do this at one time, Where an admin could view all the private messages of a user. Just curious if anyone knows anything about it or where i could get it.

registered · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6437

I would think that should be off limits, at least in the US, regarding reasonable expectations of privacy (unless you specifically state in your privacy policy that your members have none).

Still, I remember seeing something like this once, but cannot find it now.

Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2008 2:00 pm

Go into phpmyadmin and read them if you want. But Kevin is right that this might violate your members' reasonable expectations of privacy as well as your own ethics.

On the other hand, I have thought at times that there ought to be a note or terms and conditions that tells users that their private messages are not encrypted in any way and can be read by anyone who has direct access to the database. The way the database works now private messages should definitely not be used for anything that is truly private.

Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2008 2:43 pm

http://www.phpbbhacks.com/download/200

Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2008 8:44 pm

Please note that this is for phpBB 2.x, and hasn't been confirmed to work with BBtoNuke. Also, note in the readme:

Quote:

## You should add a clause to your user registration area
## saying you are using this hack, as well as alert current
## users you have installed it. Otherwise, this may be
## illegal according to the current ToS the user signed up
## for and your country of hosting.

registered · Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 6:01 am

fkelly wrote:

On the other hand, I have thought at times that there ought to be a note or terms and conditions that tells users that their private messages are not encrypted in any way and can be read by anyone who has direct access to the database. The way the database works now private messages should definitely not be used for anything that is truly private.

One could use the Legal module from DaDaNuke and add that verbiage into the Privacy Statement document.

Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 8:52 pm

kguske wrote:

Please note that this is for phpBB 2.x, and hasn't been confirmed to work with BBtoNuke.

Forgot to mention that. It is fairly easy to convert, though.

Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2009 7:14 am

was anything done with this? I *may* have an issue with one user- there have been reports he's been "aggressive" and/ or threatened violence- I need proof to back it up. I could look in the tables using phpmyadmin, but haven't a scooby where to start looking. I tried the above mentioned download, but it didn't work... (obviously)

Thanks for any help that can be provided.

Andy

Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2009 10:00 am

in your database write this sql query down :
SELECT `user_id`,`username` FROM `nuke_users` WHERE `username` LIKE 'NAME_OF_USER'

then

SELECT *
FROM `nuke_bbprivmsgs`
WHERE `privmsgs_from_userid` = `ID_OF_YOUR_USER_HERE`
LIMIT 0 , 30

and you will have all the priv_messages of this particular user