@Robert Gentel,
Robert Gentel wrote:
To expound, I received a templated PM spam forwarded, I searched the database for that exact message (the whole message had to match exactly for the query) and it was sent to over 500 different people, philforum or not. I also checked my accounts from philforum and found Salima's spam there too.
After asking here on this thread for others to forward them to me I received the rest of the bigger picture and each time I got a spam PM forwarded to me I was able to query and delete them all en masse (which reports counts of affected rows, which is how I found out about the scale).
...
No, I do not read your private messages (I don't even read all mine).
Actually by comparing the messages in the database against messages you had received you did in effect read people's private messages. You did in fact read the private pm's of 500 different users.
My background is in law and I am pretty sure that what you did does constitute a breach of privacy regulations as they are commonly understood.
Not only that but you also performed a mass delete on PM's.
I can not retrieve a single one of my private messages now. I am assuming you will real soon give me back the messages that have been sent to me by other members in good confidence?
I know a little bit about proper forum modding. A mod worth his own salt will not let his personal interests or feelings prevail over the standards and guidelines set for the forum as a whole. A mod is required to maintain the proper personal and emotional distance to the subject.
Perhaps you were justified in banning aforementioned members, perhaps not.
Only correct interpretation of the forum guidelines will tell us that.
But whatever has transpired your actions should have been exclusively limited to such taken on the basis of knowledge that was obtained by legally sanctioned methods.
In my view the procedure mentioned above does not qualify as such. Hence, evidence obtained by this method does not count as evidence legally obtained.
