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:
- 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.
- 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.
- Fraud often occurs through conversations. Obviously, when this happens, people need to feel that they can come to us with information without being persecuted.
- 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.
- 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.
