How do we monitor private conversations?

[Stuart Wright]

How do the moderators check if someone reports a spam conversation? Or one containing threats or insults?
Can moderators view private conversations?

 

[Jeremy]

Nobody can view private conversations except participants. If your report a conversation, I believe a copy of the conversation is attached to the report. There is at least one add-on that will allow you to read a user's conversations.

This may also help: http://xenforo.com/community/threads/are-private-conversations-accessible-to-admins.46390/

 

[Stuart Wright]

I just reported a PC sent to me and being an admin, I expected to see a report pop up. It did't.
So I looked for permissions relating to post reports, and I couldn't find any.

 

[Mike]

Conversation reports don't have an explicit permission, they just depend on you being a moderator with the general warn ability.

 

[Stuart Wright]

Excellent. Still got to get my head round setting up usergroups as it's so very different from vB. I was an admin, but not a moderator. Made myself a moderator and the warning appeared.
Excellent - the contents of the reported message came through so no need to dip into view the conversation. That's a time saver.
However, if we suspect a members have been doing something rule breaking or even illegal in their conversations, we need a way to check.
Will have to look at an addon.
Thanks

 

[DSF]

Send a mail to a "Tempora"-Operator and ask.

 

[Moshe1010]

If you wish, I can send you a PC conversation log add-on. It was built for me couple of days ago. It runs about 8 queries in userCP based on permissions (I set it only for super admins and admins).

 

[imno007]

I'm personally not sure why a person could not in general rely on his community to report inappropriate behavior, since it's highly unlikely that many of them would just grin and bear it for very long. I guess this idea now that everyone always needs to be spying on everyone else and monitoring their private conversations is a symptom of the times. 20 years ago you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who''d say they were totally cool with people spying on them, but this generation's motto seems to be, "Well, if you've got nothing to hide, then..." Which of course our governments must love, because it means not too many people are going to create much of a fuss about what they're up behind the scenes. Anyway, I'm not trying to convince anyone, you've got your reasons - people always have their reasons - and I'm not going to engage in any argument over it. Just throwing in my 2 cents. If you're fine with others eavesdropping on all your private communications wherever you go, whatever site you're a member of, then I guess go for it. If you're not, then of course you shouldn't do it to others.

 

[Stuart Wright]

everyone always needs to be spying on everyone else and monitoring their private conversations

Not *everyone* and not monitoring *their* [any particular person's] private conversations.
In our case we need to

1. search all conversations for a particular key word (usually a bank account or phone number) used by a fraudster to find whether they are trying to defraud anyone else via PM. We are looking for accounts being used by a fraudster.
2. search a known fraudster's conversations for the same reason
3. monitor all new conversation messages for certain specific key words (bank account and phone numbers again) to alert us when a known fraudster has registered and is trying to defraud someone again.

In the above fraudster also means someone who has broken our trading rules and is trying to trade again despite being banned already.

So this is about protecting the wider community from fraudsters. We are not interested in snooping into members' private conversations. We have better things to do.

 

[imno007]

Whoa. Belated reponse?