private messages will be less private and more purple on august 31st 2013

"Private Messages" are going to be renamed to "Purple Moosages" on August 31st to reflect that you shouldn't have the expectation they remain private. We actually started talking about this before the recent current events. But now that even Google is saying not to expect privacy, it is high time to move forward.

This doesn't mean that the moderators are going to be routinely reading your Purple Moosages of course. We have better things to do. But we can. So don't Purple Moosage your credit card number or any embarrassing secrets! Or maybe you should email those juicy secrets

Wait - what if I already posted something I don't want you to read
This change is not taking effect until Saturday August 31st. You can go into your Inbox and delete any old PMs. Deleting them deletes them forever. We can't get them back for you. You can copy/paste them to your own machine if you want to keep them for posterity.

What if I have a question about this change?
Just reply to this thread and a moderator will answer.

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In case you are wondering why we are using "moosage" instead of "message", see this cute notepad. CodeRanch thinks it is fun and we agree.

So the fact that I have hidden 250000 euro in the back field full of brambles is not secret any more ?

David

259 Rue de la Douma
Angers
France
49000

And when y'all finish clearing David's field, I got a place that needs attention.....

Seriously, I have never trusted the "private" part of anything on the web. Good call on the "moosages".

Whats the point of the NSA if they cant keep a secret !!! lols , NSA / AUSCANNZUKUS / ECHELON you can place full trust in them *winks*
open an incognito window in google chrome and it clearly states
"Going incognito doesn't affect the behavior of other people, servers, or software. Be wary of: Websites that collect or share information about you, Internet service providers or employers that track the pages you visit, Malicious software that tracks your keystrokes in exchange for free smileys,Surveillance by secret agents,People standing behind you"
the "five eyes" collect 98% of any digital information including phone calls, text messages , mms, and internet.... and also includes your GPS co-ordinates from mobile services...IP address from fixed services and cross referenced with your banking , health and criminal records , to live in the 21st century and think your not being monitored is simply naive...
Peace and Love Dave oxoxox

bump

Please explain what is meant by it's time to move forward in the context of pm's. What does the article regarding Google have to do with permies? Where do I find permies policy on disclosure? I assumed that pm's were also so people could exchange contact info, physical as well as e-mail, addresses, etc, Why make pm's "less private"?

Regarding the Google privacy story link, below is another link from the comment section which talks about the context of Google's statement:

http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/08/14/no-google-did-not-say-that-we-cant-expect-privacy-in-gmail/?fromcat=all

Trust and security are two distinct things that people often confuse or merge their meanings.

Sysadmins usually don't make a practice of reading email or PM's just like you post(wo)man doesn't read your mail. But they can. You trust them not to. But neither is secure. Is that little bit of glue on an envelope secure? no. Either can be read by those who manage the delivery.

Once you give something away, consider it public! Doesn't matter if it is email, snail mail, picture, voice message, private message, SMS, face-to-face communication--the receiver can share it however they want. Don't share CC or SS numbers or plots to take over the world over unsecure methods or with untrusted parties.

Why make pm's "less private"?

Nothing is being done to make them "less private".
We are merely removing the word "private" from their description, as the word is not an accurate descriptor.

In essence, nothing on the internet is truly 'private'. There are many means that organizations like NSA, CIA, KGB, Mosad, etal routinely use to intercept conversations between private citizens. Many hackers also have the means to do so. Therefore, a term like "Private Messages" is a misleading term, which gives people a false sense of security. We are merely trying to be more realistic in our choice of terminology.

If you have any questions, just send me a PM. lol

I am well aware of the insecurity of internet use, the trending toward voluntarily disclosure of what some would consider private. But the issue of trust is what should be gauged by the stated ethics a public forum conducts privacy policies by. That is why I asked for permies disclosure policy. Why would permies admin even need to consider reading a pm? The reference to Google makes it seems like it is all fait accompli even attempting to think trust has any value with respect to upholding privacy exchanges for forum users. As was mentioned in the article link I provided above, Google does have a privacy policy. At least that is something to measure integrity against. Other small sites with forums I participate in declare how they will treat "personal" information and yes it is based upon trust. It shouldn't matter what the Big Guys say or do. As a permaculture site, especially, I expect principles in all aspects are an important matter.

So what agency of the federal government has asked to read our private messages? Can you say? Will you turn them over to them? Just wondering

Why is it someone decides to correct an inaccuracy they are treated with such suspicion?

I have a feeling, knowing what I know of Paul, that if some alphabet soup agency came to him we would know about it. Big email and blog post and all the publicity he could muster to give a big FU to the powers that be.

So does this means that you are going to read PM to block spam.
Or do you plan to "read/scan" the PM to serve us Ads like google.

Even though I deleted all super secret PM that I sent to Bob and Mary.
They did not delete theirs so you still have access to them.

Is there a option to go off the record (self-destruct after being read, or something similar)
Or maybe we should just post a link to such a self-destructing web-service.
Does anyone know of any.

Wow, so much discussion about nothing. The "private" messages were never private. The name change will change nothing. Messages will not be any less "private" afterwards. The only change is in the accuracy of the name.

Joe Braxton wrote:Wow, so much discussion about nothing. The "private" messages were never private. The name change will change nothing. Messages will not be any less "private" afterwards. The only change is in the accuracy of the name.

Precisely.

NO government agency has asked to read our PMs - if they wanted to, they probably wouldn't ask, they'd just do it.
NO change is going to happen with the exception of what we call them - They'll still be PMs: Purple Moosages.
NO person in the administration has any intent on reading or sharing them - we all have better things to spend our time on.

If this minor change causes paranoia in some people, those people would probably be better off not using the www at all.
The www is a dangerous place for paranoid people to be hanging out. Stress kills more people than cholesterol.
For the rest of us, it is a wonderful tool to use in the free exchange of information and ideas.

@ john

Holy smokes, I think all I did was follow the suggestion from leila:

What if I have a question about this change?
Just reply to this thread and a moderator will answer.

So i asked some questions specific to Permies regarding the change. All I was expecting were answers to the specific questions, that's all. If they are improper questions regarding the subject, then say so. Projections about paranoia seem unnecessary IMHO.


Michael

I am just trying to reiterate that the only change will be the name itself.
I have received some very paranoid PMs regarding this change, hence my reference to it.

If anybody is paranoid about this, perhaps they should just go to their PM pages and delete their In/Out boxes, or transfer them to their own PC, rather than just leave them exposed on a public forum.

This entire episode should be viewed as a wake up call to anybody using the www as a means of communicating information that they want to remain 'private'. There is no assurance of privacy anywhere on the web. Not in your email account(s), not in the "Shopping Cart" page, nowhere. At any point in time, it is all subject to compromise.

We are merely trying to tell people that we are removing the word 'private' from our messaging system, because we feel that it is a misnomer, given the way the web functions in the real world.

So you pretty much want ppl to be paranoid/aware that their private message are not actually private but that their employer, hacker, ISP, website admin/steward, gov, recipient friends, etc all have access to said msg. And so they need to become paranoid/aware that that is how things really work, and so a name change will help reflect that.

Ok so now people are now letting it sink and and saying wow, I knen that, but when you put it like that it just seem "in my face real". Kinda like the whole swoden/PRISM thing.
No one is really super surprise but it does throw it in your face.

And I think the reactions are OK.
And it is also ok to say that we are not doing anything different from what any other guys are doing.
We just wanted you to become aware/paranoid about it.

We are not trying to cause paranoia or anything else.

Just a renaming policy to reflect that we don't think "Private Message" in any way guaranties 'privacy' on the internet.

I'm sure that each of us has, at some point in his/her life, told somebody a secret, only to find out that the other person is spreading it around to all of their friends. That is always a possibility when we share with others. It is no different here.

John Polk wrote:I am just trying to reiterate that the only change will be the name itself.

Actually, I think there is going to be one other change. We're making them purple.

Also, to clarify, I'm on the admin but I will *not* have free access to all your PMs. As I understand it, it will take a huge amount of effort on the part of the programming staff to be able to hack into the PM system. In theory it is possible, and it is also possible that someone from outside of permies could hack into them, which is why we're re-naming them 'purple' instead of 'private'.

I know it's already been reiterated more than once that no drastic changes are happening except the fact that we decided to rename "private messages" to something which doesn't have the word "private" in it. But, I'll try to add a bit more to make it clear why we decided to do this.

Private messages were/are a way to let the forum members communicate with one another without having it visible to the rest of the folks at the forums. Technically, these messages get stored by the forum software, the same way as the forum posts, except that they are only made available to the sender and the recipient. In other words, those messages are still available to people who have extra super power access to the software. There are very few people with that level of access and the level of knowledge about the software, that would grant them access to those messages. At present, I think there are maybe 5 or even less who have that level of access.

These people with extra super powers are those who have been personally selected by Paul and as such come with a certain amount of trust and integrity. They have no intention of reading or accessing these private messages and they understand the implicit trust factor that's associated with being a person with such access.

Now, on rare occasions, certain members of the forum tend to send out abusive private messages to some other member. The recipient then contacts a forum moderator to let them know of such messages. This is then handled internally by first validating the complaint and then taking necessary action. On some such occasions, it becomes necessary that the "private message" in question needs to be accessed by the people with extra super powers. This is one of the cases where people with extra super powers end up accessing the "private message". Like I said, this is very rare but at the same time, it does happen.

This has always been the case and will continue to be. The sole intention of the current announcement, now, is to be upfront about these details and make it more clear that "private" isn't really the right word for such messages. Hence the name change for that feature. Like I said, the change or the intention is not about making the private messages available to someone else and although some members in this forum have the extra super powers to access these messages, those people are trusted and selected by Paul and they only resort to accessing those messages when it's really necessary to do so.

I wish to add some clarity:

I *fully* intend to make it far easier for the lowliest of staff to read the PMs of anybody here. For any or no reason. Further still, if they want to take those messages and do all sorts of weird things with it, that will be okay.

Why?

Because I really prefer that people not use the PM feature in permies. Sometimes you just need a PM thing, but I really don't want to pay for the hosting for something that people should really take to email.

Welcome to 2013. Where on-line stuff has reached a new level of icky. We are facing all sorts of weird, twisted crap and trying to figure out how to deal with it. I've decided that we will take this path.

Further, bad guys seem to be using PMs. And the staff has been reluctant to go looking at PMs because they have been called "private". So, I want most users to just not use PMs. Then if we see an account using a lot of PMs, that would be an indicator of possible bad guy stuff and we can go take a look.

So, if you have anything actually private - go get rid of it now. And in the future, do your private stuff in email. And if PM is your only way of communicating, then the PM should say "what's your email address?"

If this change bothers you in any way, then I am suddenly very concerned about what your intentions are for the use of my site. Because it has never been my intention to provide a private message service.

Here is how I want the message to appear any time somebody tries to write a PM:

permies.com does not have 'private' messages. The closest we have is 'purple moosages'. This is where you send a message to one other individual, and it is made available for all of the staff to see too, so they can forward it to their co-workers for a good laugh. But since you tend to write the world's most boring messages, the staff ends up rarely looking at yours. If you want something that might actually be private, you can try email.

I think this idea is far better than the other plan: turn off all PMs.

I've gone back and had a look at my PM record. Nothing that I wouldn't want the world to see. In the beginning, there were welcomes and invitations to join other forums. Sometimes, there have been congratulations for nailing some point in a thread where passions run high.

There was some communication with moderators over spam that I reported and inappropriate use of the messaging by disgruntled former visitors to the site.

I've only had a few instances where a particular person followed me around the forums, mostly to say that only their favorite building materials should be used.

One lady sent racy pictures. I was fine with it but our stalwart steward Ken was not.

Probably the most unusual items are the many notes to self. I sometimes engage in battles of wits with members who appear to be unarmed. I pop the reply into my messages as "deletion insurance", just in case the thread goes down or I'm "unfairly targeted" by leftist forces l never reply to these notes to self. That would be weird, especially if it were to devolve into the realm of threats and name calling.

They are certainly purple. The change is only skin deep. Nothing has changed. Top questions for tomorrow -------- What happened to the private messages ?