Attachment System Improvements in 1.1 - Privacy concerns

Kier said:
For the avoidance of doubt, XenForo does not allow anyone except conversation recipients to view the textual content of those conversations.

The attachment browser is designed as a file manager, to enable admins to manage disk space on their servers, to identify and remove objectionable attachments, and to enforce quota policies if they have one.

I see no privacy conflict at all. If you don't want a site owner to be able to view your files, don't upload them to that person's site. Very simple really.
Click to expand...

EXACTLY. A second board I run is a humor site that sometimes has adult or objectionable material on it. As the owner of the site I should be able to see ALL files uploaded to my server as I am the one liable at the end of the day. I couldn't care less about what is said in their messages.
 
How about an ACP tickbox setting: Exclude images from Personal Conversations

That should do it. Any conciencious admins can then set this option and they won't see PC images in the attachment manager; you'll be none the wiser as to what your members are sending each other and your community member's privacy will be protected.

Peace of mind for those admins who want it!! (y)

Cheers,
Shaun :D
 
GeeksChat said:
How about an ACP tickbox setting: Exclude images from Personal Conversations

That should do it. Any conciencious admins can then set this option and they won't see PC images in the attachment manager; you'll be none the wiser as to what your members are sending each other and your community member's privacy will be protected.

Peace of mind for those admins who want it!! (y)

Cheers,
Shaun :D
Click to expand...

you mean "protecting" the Admin from himself? :D :p

Stop operating your forum if you are afraid of everything. Do not look at any images within "Coversations" if you are afraid of yourself braking the privacy of your members.

We should be happy that with XF we have a software which is actually working quite fine without any major bugs.
 
erich37 said:
you mean "protecting" the Admin from himself? :D :p
Click to expand...

Nope - I mean give the option to Admins who DON'T WANT to look at images from their member's personal conversations.

At the moment they have no choice - the software forces them to see everything. The option I suggested would allow Admins to filter out personal conversation images if they so chose.

I'm not afraid of anything; but I've equally no interest in looking at my members personal conversations content or the images therein - and I like to extend the courtesy of giving that small level of privacy because that is what I expect when I use other people's boards.

Board owners ALL have the capacity for viewing EVERYTHING that is in their databases. This new tool is just an enabler - it gathers the attachments in one place to make it easier to manage them - and that's great. An excellent tool. Another "win" for XF.

But ... if you don't WANT to view attachements from your member's personal conversations, you shouldn't HAVE to!! :)

So ... ACP tickbox setting: Exclude images from Personal Conversations

Cheers,
Shaun :D
 
Unless we can disable viewing of PC attachments in the AdminCP, we will not enable PC attachment permissions for any of our users. They use conversations for private communication and we want to maintain the current level of privacy.
 
GeeksChat said:
So ... ACP tickbox setting: Exclude images from Personal Conversations
Click to expand...

Actually, a more positive way to approach it might be to have the content types as selectable for the query so that you can SELECT forum post attachments, PC attachments, resource centre attachments, node (page) attachments, etc. and then just tick the ones you want to review.

Win - win all round!! (y)

Cheers,
Shaun :D
 
ragtek said:
Yes, that's a big problem with "VERY STUPID USERS"

I have 3 forums where 70% of members are older then 50 and have no IT background. (lesson learned => NEVER ever start a forum for this audience:D )
Click to expand...

that's not a nice thing to say at all :(

GeeksChat said:
I'm not afraid of anything; but I've equally no interest in looking at my members personal conversations content or the images therein - and I like to extend the courtesy of giving that small level of privacy because that is what I expect when I use other people's boards.
Click to expand...

I have no interest at all (n)
 
I'm really struggling to understand some of the arguments and points being made in this thread.

Anyone with database access can read conversation messages.

What does it matter where or how it can be done from; phpMyAdmin, ACP, CLI, etc?
(Not that this is about textual content, rather images.)

It's quite simple and comes down to each individual; if you don't want to read conversation messages, don't.
 
quote="kkm323, post: 263620"]that's not a nice thing to say at all :(
[/quote]
But it is so:P

we have a special word in german for them (DAU => Dümmster anzunehmender User => Most stupid user)
 
GeeksChat said:
But ... if you don't WANT to view attachements from your member's personal conversations, you shouldn't HAVE to!! :)
Click to expand...

Bang on the nose.

An admin can access any PM on any system just by browsing the database. I don't see why this is causing so much fuss.

This extension just allows for an easy way to prune off attachments IF needed.

Hell. If you have THAT much of a problem with it, just don't allow users to attach files to PC's. Let them send files the old fassioned way of hosting elsewhere and pasting links in text.

This is a GREAT feature and has the REQUIRED admin backend to handle it also.
 
I think people are missing my point.

My point is that admins who want to retain their members privacy, and don't want to see attachments from PC - should have the option to exclude them, that's all.

As per Kier's screenshot above - it looks like you can do that by selecting only the POST attachments.

Job done.

The morals of viewing them or not is irrelevant - the point is that admins should be able to chose whether they see them or not.

Cheers,
Shaun :D
 
Kier said:
That makes no sense to me whatsoever. If an admin wants to view attachments in conversations, all they would have to do is go and switch the option, surely?
Click to expand...

Exactly: want to see then (unticked) - don't want to see them (ticked)

The sort shows the respective attachment content, and should the conscientious admin ever *need* to see them, they have the option to temporarily untick.

However, the drop-down you've posted seems to do the same thing so all's well and Admin's can chose. (I'm assuming it wouldn't take much to make the default content type Post?)

Cheers,
Shaun :D
 
Floris said:
Ok, rephrase: Reality of the situation is that the law firm with the most money seems to win in any case. When some dumb American decides their 'rights' are violated, and financially drain a hobby site into the ground and ruin someone's life because they were too kind to let them use their service at no cost.
Click to expand...

While I completely agree with you in general, not every jackass who does such a thing is an American, thanks.
 
Trekkan said:
While I completely agree with you in general, not every jackass who does such a thing is an American, thanks.
Click to expand...
Sorry for that - it's how we see Americans in EU these days, unhappy = lawsuit.
 
Floris said:
Sorry for that - it's how we see Americans in EU these days, unhappy = lawsuit.
Click to expand...

I REALLY wish I could disagree with you on that. ;) But, just remember that there are many of us who aren't in the "get rich by lawsuit" boat and loath people who are. =)

Anyway, not to derail the thread... back on topic...

I like the new attachment system changes. =)
 
Brogan said:
It's quite simple and comes down to each individual; if you don't want to read conversation messages, don't.
Click to expand...
Slavik said:
An admin can access any PM on any system just by browsing the database. I don't see why this is causing so much fuss.
Click to expand...

Simple: Because it is, in almost all cases, *illegal* to do that. Just because you can, doesn't mean you're allowed to; just because no one sues doesn't mean it's fair game.
Analogy: just because a SysAdmin has full access to a company server, he's generally *not* at liberty to snoop around in the accounting files or the files of the employees. Nor is the *owner* of the company.

It's not like I'm incredibly happy with that situation, but that's the state of the data privacy laws in all major legal domains around the world.

The attachment browser is cool and I'm incredibly grateful for that feature, but extended to the attachments of ostensibly private conversations, this is likely (in the case of the EU and UK: definitely) a legal hotbed for the forum hoster -- especially since attachments don't have to be just images, what about pdfs, it could be a contract, a private letter, doesn't really matter.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom