An Explanation

[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.