status-monitor Direct Messages Question

Hello,

Direct messages are like emails on NamePros. It's our understanding that the sender and recipients of an email have the right to share message(s) that are exchanged within the email thread. We follow those standards with direct messages. An example would be if there was an agreement made between all participants that the direct message would stay private because we do what we can to enforce agreements made on NamePros.


Hope that helps,

Wow, you know the majority of the people on this forum would be against that? A poll would bear that out. If you read the thread in question, most assumed direct/private message are private. You have people literally posting offers thru DM to the forum, that's not good. I've signed up to many forums over the years, I've never seen this allowed.

5 different people, not including me, that feel the same way:

"I thought we weren't allowed to post PM's/Direct Messages"

"i wonder if you got the seller's permission to post your private conversation publicly?"

"That is supposed to be a private message."

"It's not nice and professional to DISCLOSE what happened in PM. PM means "Private Message"

"But, What he said here below if the bad refers to plastering a private mention on the public forum in which it was sent."

https://www.namepros.com/threads/400-000-for-a-domain-on-namepros.1020185/

I haven't seen this before pop up as a discussion on forums but it may result in a precedence of forums. I would be for ethics of privacy however information sharing may over ride rulings.

I thought they were private, it's nice to have a record of transactions etc, forever as they cant be deleted but overall the rule.sucks
Privacy.please

I agree they should be private, but maybe having the mindset they could go public would alter some of what we say. Of course I am not thinking about offers and such. I am thinking more narrative/commentary conversational pieces

What if you black out the profile picture and username of the DM you're posting.

Assuming you don't have the other parties permission to publicly screenshot the correspondence, is it appropriate for information sharing and discussion, to black out the other party involved, and not mention them by name/username?

Dont need permission. By using DM you give the other party permission.
How about a disclaimer, similar to what i use in emails.

there is no privacy when you use the internet
maybe its time to become aware of that simple fact

Direct Message (Conversation) is the term for Xenforo similar to Private Message from Vbulletin.

Private means Private and disclose any Private Message to the Public should not be allowed.

Email conversation between two people are supposed to be privated too.

johnn said:

Direct Message (Conversation) is the term for Xenforo similar to Private Message from Vulletin.

Private means Private and disclose any Private Message to the Public should not be allowed.

Email conversation between two people are supposed to be privated too.

Click to expand...

LOL

I think the lesson here is: Don't say anything in a PM that you wouldn't want shared in public, that may be potentially embarrassing to you or hurtful to your reputation or business! Treat it the same as an email, like Eric said!

And on the flip side, if you are going to make it a habit of releasing PM details on a public thread, you are not going to be very popular here and you are going to do damage to your reputation and trustworthiness as an individual and as a business as well.

If you think email is not private then ask Hillary Clinton.

I think it would depend on what the direct message is about. If someone sends me a private message out of the blue, I didn't ask for this interaction, and say it's a scam, I have every right to expose this scammer. Someone has to agree to give you privacy, to assume it is beyond foolish.

People think those disclaimers they put at the end of email are some kind of legal binding effect. They don't. They may make the lesser informed shy away and the disclaimer works as a deterrent but there is no legal agreement forged. You can't send someone something and include a statement which they did not agree to.

Disclaimers Imply Confidentiality
I’ve concluded that, with the exception of the second bullet, the other reasons rest on shaky legal footing. For today, let’s just look at the first reason – communicating that the email and attachments are confidential and, in the case of law firms, privileged. Based on my limited sampling, I suspect this is the most common email disclaimer. It seems like every large company uses some version of it such as:

“The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain proprietary, business-confidential and/or privileged material. If you are not the intended recipient of this message you are hereby notified that any use, review, retransmission, dissemination, distribution, reproduction or any action taken in reliance upon this message is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer.”

Confidentiality obligations generally arise via contract, such as by signing a non-disclosure agreement. Contracts, as we all know, require both parties to agree – what the law calls a “meeting of the minds.” Dropping a standard confidentiality disclaimer at the bottom of every company email doesn’t unilaterally force on a recipient any duty of confidentiality. In other words, this disclaimer is of no legal effect.

There is, perhaps, some deterrent effect. An unintended recipient may think twice about forwarding an email received by mistake after reading a confidentiality disclaimer. Obviously, putting the disclaimer at the top of the email would be more effective than at the bottom although understandably very few companies are willing to disrupt the flow of every email communication with a bold disclaimer at the top. Do I personally think this is likely to be of much practical use anyway? I don’t. These disclaimers are so common as to be often overlooked. Also, any well-informed recipient will know the disclaimer doesn’t carry much weight and any bad actor is not likely to pay the disclaimer any heed. Still, I acknowledge there are circumstances where the disclaimer may serve its purpose. Let’s say there is nominal (but not zero) deterrent effect.

www.businessattorneyinaustin.com/2014/12/annoying-email-confidentiality-disclaimers/

Now of course someone posting another member's dm is going to probably put an end to doing future business.

Personally I have never published a dm, but I think the notion that one party believing they can unilaterally force their rules on another is just not right and it is not legally enforceable.

It's not email. Direct messages, private messages same thing. As pointed out earlier, it's just forum software terms. This is seriously the only forum I know of where it's ok to post private messages. If people wanted it public, that's where it would be.

Any forum software usually clearly spells it out:

"The ProBoards Private Messaging (PM) system provides a way to communicate directly with other members of the discussion forum. Messages you send and receive via PM are private and can only be viewed by you and the forum member you're corresponding with."

https://www.proboards.com/forum-help-guide/private-messaging

And if you want to use this forum's terminology. Direct message. If one person direct messages somebody else, it's not supposed to be shared, unless both agree. If somebody is spamming or stuff like that, then you message admin/mods and let them handle it.

frank-germany said:

there is no privacy when you use the internet
maybe its time to become aware of that simple fact

Click to expand...

That has nothing to do with any of this. People in charge can make the rules, they own the forum.

I used to run many forums and I want to inform members of one thing....

PRIVATE MESSAGES ARE NOT PRIVATE

There are forum hacks available that let mods read all private messages. This is well known in the industry and I know of several forums where moderators will look at private messages to ban troublemakers.

I am not implying that NamePros has such a hack installed but I am saying that any forum can have it installed and everyone would be best to assume it was in place before posting anything in a PM they do not want shared.

Same goes for conversations with other members, assume it could go public before you send the message. Following this advice could save you lots of headaches in the future.

I agree with JB lions. It is not OK to publicly share private messages and rules need to be updated to reflect that IMO. So what you're basically saying is if I ask someone how much they're expecting for a top domain I then have the right to publicly hand this out? NO. WRONG.

@jblions Please add a poll to this thread.

JB Lions said:

you know the majority of the people on this forum would be against that? A poll would bear that out.

Click to expand...

Any participant of a DM (Direct Message) can legally share those messages (Whether it be on NamePros or elsewhere), so forbidding it on NamePros doesn't change much and may provide a false sense of privacy, which would likely do more harm than good. Our existing policy reflects standard best practices of the internet: never send anything to someone online that you don't want made public, because even if we forbid the sharing of direct messages on NamePros, they can still go share your direct messages on Twitter, Facebook, etc. and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

However, I've added a poll to this thread to see what everyone thinks. I can't promise it will change our policy, but I'll discuss it with our management team.


Hope that helps,

MapleDots said:

There are forum hacks available that let mods read all private messages.

Click to expand...

Mods do not have access to view direct messages on NamePros. That is intentional and by design. On NamePros, mods must be added/permitted by one of the participants before they can view any direct messages.

TheDot.shop said:

I think the lesson here is: Don't say anything in a PM that you wouldn't want shared in public, that may be potentially embarrassing to you or hurtful to your reputation or business! Treat it the same as an email, like Eric said!

And on the flip side, if you are going to make it a habit of releasing PM details on a public thread, you are not going to be very popular here and you are going to do damage to your reputation and trustworthiness as an individual and as a business as well.

Click to expand...

You are right here and the bottom line is that more is said and told about the person receiving the message who posts it publicly rather than the person sending it to someone privately/directly/personally.

With that said, this is in reference to a recent posting and thread here at namepros but there could be instances where public safety and other such things when one would want to post publicly and where the person sending the message needs to be exposed. I don't think there is a real gray area between the two, it is pretty simple to figure out the difference between the two instances.

It's foolish to treat anything that happens on the internet as private in any sense of the word, no matter where it happens or who's trying to protect it. Everything gets hacked eventually--and that's assuming someone who's supposed to have access to the info doesn't leak it, which happens quite often.

Yes, in an ideal world, private conversations would indeed stay private. However, there are a few issues that prevent us from turning that into a rule:

1. Such a rule would be completely unenforceable. We're not omniscient; we have no way of proving who leaked what info where. People could easily be framed; screenshots can easily be forged.
2. Like any popular website, we're frequently targeted by hackers. Our security practices exceed industry standards, but that doesn't mean we're invincible. We're not in a position to guarantee that your conversations will remain private--no online service is.
3. Fraud often occurs through conversations. Obviously, when this happens, people need to feel that they can come to us with information without being persecuted.
4. Sometimes people are legally obligated or encouraged to disclose information, and not always to government investigators. For example, if someone threatened to physically harm another person, it might be wise to file a police report.
5. Accountability becomes an issue anytime conversations are guaranteed to be off-the-record. If people know they're going to be held accountable for what they say, they're more likely to act responsibly and professionally. The moment we take away accountability in conversations, I'm sure we'll see much more "aggressive" sales tactics.

@equity78 also made pretty good points that are worth reading. People often assume communications are confidential when they're not. Just because someone says "this message is confidential" doesn't necessarily make it so. And even if there was a contract, and everyone agreed to confidentiality, nothing you do on the internet can ever be deleted--it's out there, somewhere, forever, no matter what you do. Nobody can delete it; nobody can even determine all of the places it exists. It's foolish to think that information existing in such a state could ever be considered confidential.

It rarely ever makes the news, but websites get hacked all the time, especially forums. We're very lucky that we have the resources to mitigate most attacks, but no system is infallible. If you have even just a handful of online accounts, someone out there probably already has your data. And they probably have your password, which is probably the same on all of your accounts, which means they can probably just log into your NamePros account if they really want to read your conversations. To make matters worse, a lot of these leaks eventually become public, though we have no way of knowing just how many private leaks are actually out there. So would we really be doing you any favors by providing a false sense of confidentiality? No matter how hard we try, that's not something that we--or anyone else--can reasonably enforce.

Now, if it makes you feel better to have some sort of confidentiality agreement between yourself and the people with whom you communicate, that's fine, but keep in mind that Hacker Bob meandering in from stage left never signed your agreement and wouldn't comply even if he had. Also, as @equity78 said, you both have to explicitly agree; a notice at the top or bottom of a message isn't enough. And it's still up to you to enforce it.

I am not sure why do we make this thing such a big deal?
We are all understand about site get hacked and email issues with privacy but all we ask is DM/Private Message should be private within the forum.
If any member who posts DM here it should be deleted by Admin/Mod and get a warning.

It's a simple thing that apply to all online forums.
I do not want my email address, my offer or an other information that I convey from DM post in the thread.

I will add this has nothing to do with legally or other sites. Only has to do

Paul Buonopane said:

It's foolish to treat anything that happens on the internet as private in any sense of the word, no matter where it happens or who's trying to protect it. Everything gets hacked eventually--and that's assuming someone who's supposed to have access to the info doesn't leak it, which happens quite often.

Yes, in an ideal world, private conversations would indeed stay private. However, there are a few issues that prevent us from turning that into a rule:

1. Such a rule would be completely unenforceable. We're not omniscient; we have no way of proving who leaked what info where. People could easily be framed; screenshots can easily be forged.
2. Like any popular website, we're frequently targeted by hackers. Our security practices exceed industry standards, but that doesn't mean we're invincible. We're not in a position to guarantee that your conversations will remain private--no online service is.
3. Fraud often occurs through conversations. Obviously, when this happens, people need to feel that they can come to us with information without being persecuted.
4. Sometimes people are legally obligated or encouraged to disclose information, and not always to government investigators. For example, if someone threatened to physically harm another person, it might be wise to file a police report.
5. Accountability becomes an issue anytime conversations are guaranteed to be off-the-record. If people know they're going to be held accountable for what they say, they're more likely to act responsibly and professionally. The moment we take away accountability in conversations, I'm sure we'll see much more "aggressive" sales tactics.

@equity78 also made pretty good points that are worth reading. People often assume communications are confidential when they're not. Just because someone says "this message is confidential" doesn't necessarily make it so. And even if there was a contract, and everyone agreed to confidentiality, nothing you do on the internet can ever be deleted--it's out there, somewhere, forever, no matter what you do. Nobody can delete it; nobody can even determine all of the places it exists. It's foolish to think that information existing in such a state could ever be considered confidential.

It rarely ever makes the news, but websites get hacked all the time, especially forums. We're very lucky that we have the resources to mitigate most attacks, but no system is infallible. If you have even just a handful of online accounts, someone out there probably already has your data. And they probably have your password, which is probably the same on all of your accounts, which means they can probably just log into your NamePros account if they really want to read your conversations. To make matters worse, a lot of these leaks eventually become public, though we have no way of knowing just how many private leaks are actually out there. So would we really be doing you any favors by providing a false sense of confidentiality? No matter how hard we try, that's not something that we--or anyone else--can reasonably enforce.

Now, if it makes you feel better to have some sort of confidentiality agreement between yourself and the people with whom you communicate, that's fine, but keep in mind that Hacker Bob meandering in from stage left never signed your agreement and wouldn't comply even if he had. Also, as @equity78 said, you both have to explicitly agree; a notice at the top or bottom of a message isn't enough. And it's still up to you to enforce it.

Click to expand...

What in the world. You're talking about hacking, illegal this and that, everything to distract from something basic.

Private message should be private. Simple stuff.

"Such a rule would be completely unenforceable."

What? Somebody posts a private message in a public forum, you delete it, give them a warning. If they do it again, you ban them. How is that not enforceable if you run the place? You have owner, admin, mods etc. It's a forum. You control it.

"Obviously, when this happens, people need to feel that they can come to us with information without being persecuted."

Right, which was posted before. Message admin/mods, let them handle it.

I wish this was a public poll with names attached to the votes, so we could weed out the unprofessional people here.

JB Lions said:

I will add this has nothing to do with legally or other sites. Only has to do


What in the world. You're talking about hacking, illegal this and that, everything to distract from something basic.

Private message should be private. Simple stuff.

"Such a rule would be completely unenforceable."

What? Somebody posts a private message in a public forum, you delete it, give them a warning. If they do it again, you ban them. How is that not enforceable if you run the place? You have owner, admin, mods etc. It's a forum. You control it.

"Obviously, when this happens, people need to feel that they can come to us with information without being persecuted."

Right, which was posted before. Message admin/mods, let them handle it.

I wish this was a public poll with names attached to the votes, so we could weed out the unprofessional people here.

Click to expand...

wishfull thinking
doesn't create savety

frank-germany said:

wishfull thinking
doesn't create savety

Click to expand...

Safety? Delete post, not complicated stuff. So Frank, if you message me about something, gave me information just meant for me, you would be ok with me taking that and posting it publicly?

Even the way the question was set up a little slick:

"No, they shouldn't be allowed even though they could still share those messages on other websites"

We're only talking about what you control, this site. And if somebody took info from a private message on this site and posted it elsewhere then............. you ban them from this site.

JB Lions said:

I wish this was a public poll with names attached to the votes, so we could weed out the unprofessional people here.

Click to expand...

So because one doesn't agree with you, that makes us unprofessional and needed to be weeded?
Good grief!!