An Explanation

[Strike For The South]

So instead of a temp ban so this can get sorted, the admins rifle through the PMs

How is that not taking a sledgehammer to a nail?

I would like to get all the new rules out of the way now please

[InsaneApache]

I'll chip in.

I can understand the reasons for doing this. I don't like what was done.

[Kralizec]

If I were in a similar situation as King Jan (i.e. they suspected my account was hacked) I'd rather have that they checked my PM box for unusual things instead of banning my account until and if I was ever able to prove my identity.

However I rarely use the PM system here. I mostly come here for the public discussions in the tavern - I don't really talk to anyone here privately. I've also decided early on that I'd rarely give details about my real life on the internet, and never in a way that could be traced to my real name. I have a facebook account and stuff, but I'm pretty careful with that and I'd never allow people from forums like this to see it, no matter how much I like you. I've seen people on this forum describing, basically, which street they live in. The closest I've come to is tell which city I live in, and even that I rarely mention.

Some of the posts here are remarkable, at least to me. I can understand that other people use PM more than I do, talk about their personal lives with it and dissaprove of what the staff did - but people react as if it's a case of a psychiatrist or a lawyer breaking his duty of secrecy and spilling his clients personal information. To me, this incident is serveral orders of magnitude smaller.

Which isn't to say it's a light matter, but I think that the circumstances of the case and the method the staff chose were justified. The administrators always had the power to do this. They publicly announced what they did when they could simply have kept it as secret. They told their reasons for doing so and said this was the first, and probably last time they ever did it. I don't see how anybody could reasonably fear that the staff would ever do the same with his or her own account, or at least more than before.

[caravel]

That said, I can post recent evidence of Warman and his attacks on other members on this site (but won't, NSFW language etc). From what I've seen of Jan he seems to be different to Warman, better. From this stage the act is done regardless.

Evidence is a big word... evidence needs to be 100% solid, it's no good in producing quotes which cannot be verified to have come from the quoted source. i.e. if you were to quote PMs, that would not be proof enough, you would need to open the PM(s) in question and hit the report button. Any other "evidence" would presumably be still accessible on the main forums - so I'm not clear as to where else this evidence is going to come from - nor do I see it as relevant. The behaviour of the member in question was not outright criminal, just annoying and trollish, so it's irrelevant and certainly does not justify entering his brother's account to read PMs.

I prefer that they are open with decisions like these, the fact that they are and the members of the admin staff, I have faith that something like this will not happen again, or at the very least this option will not be discussed again. (Yes the saying comes to mind that once you've crossed the line, it is easier to keep doing and harder to see it anymore (I probably butchered it, but you know what I mean.)

Indeed, the staff could have covered this up, but didn't. They'd already told the owner of the account that they'd reset his password due to suspicious activity, so they could easily have accessed his PMs between resetting and emailing him to let him know, marked the messages as unread and he would probably have been none the wiser... I'm sure they knew this but very much to their credit, they chose to come out with it and face the music.

Point of that long winded story is that if Jan wants his account back, it would be easy to do, I imagine

Yes, it's for the account owner to contact the staff - if the staff had banned/suspended his account because of suspected misuse, then they would have been doing him a favour. The next time he is in touch (not someone else using his email) he could have easily confirmed it was him and gotten his account reactivated. As I understand it, suspicion was aroused, because suspect PMs were coming from the account to staff members. After the first (or second?) deactivation and reactivation from the email - coming from someone who was obviously not the account holder - the staff would have been sure that the email was also compromised and should have simply banned the account and waited for the real owner to get in touch. There is no other alternative and staff cannot be expected to micromanage accounts any more than that. Every member is responsible for their own account security.

If I were in a similar situation as King Jan (i.e. they suspected my account was hacked) I'd rather have that they checked my PM box for unusual things instead of banning my account until and if I was ever able to prove my identity.

However I rarely use the PM system here.

A ban can be reversed - reading someone's PMs cannot. Some of the members here are very long term, have been here for more than a decade and probably use this forum to stay in touch, some may know each other by name, where each other live, etc. I honestly don't believe that attempting to justify that PMs can be read, or that members should not expect them to be private, as some have argued is the answer to this.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

A ban can be reversed - reading someone's PMs cannot. Some of the members here are very long term, have been here for more than a decade and probably use this forum to stay in touch, some may know each other by name, where each other live, etc. I honestly don't believe that attempting to justify that PMs can be read, or that members should not expect them to be private, as some have argued is the answer to this.

This - for me - is the key point, and why this is unacceptable. I have real life contact with maybe half a dozen members on this board through other mediums like facebook, I'm probably unique in that I use my real name as a handle, but I'm far from the first member to put it in their sig or profile.

The point is - the PM system is not disconnected from my real life, without looking I couldn't be sure what was in there - I shouldn't have to EVER worry about the staff looking.

What was done was clearly, unambiguously, wrong. If it were not, we would not have been informed. Consider this, suppose Jan's account had not been hacked? Then where would be? It seems to me that the PM's wouldn't have been read unless it was fairly certain it was Warman anyway.

Right, that's it. I really am done now.

[Drunk Clown]

I shouldn't have to EVER worry about the staff looking.

Based on what?

[Andres]

The PM's were accessed because there were suspicions (and a precedent of the same account being (ab)used by a banned member without approval of the original account owner), but no certainty. Instead of letting it drag on for a long time, the decision was made to read the pm's in order to solve the issue fast.

Looking back, that probably wasn't a wise decision; but in the heat of the moment, staff deemed it the best thing to do to handle the situation swiftly. I think somewhere along the road perspective was lost and there was too much focus on getting confirmation about the account in question and being able to act fast.

I'm glad some of you voiced their opinions and viewpoints so clearly and I think staff learns a valuable lesson here. No matter how annoying certain things/members can be, sometimes it's better to live with it, or at least to endure it for a while, then to break long standing codes of conduct in order to get a quick solution. I appreciate the support from some of our members here, but I think those disapproving of the action are correct. As Secura already said, there will be no more reading of pm's by staff, unless we're forced (e.g. a court order) or in case of a reported pm (in case you weren't aware: you can report pm's, it's a feature that was implemented a few years back already).