How Secure are Private Messages?

[Michael_Molnar]

This has happened too many times to me, so I must speak out. My old PM's that I erased months ago keep re-appearing in my PM list.

 

I thought that when I erase my PM's, they are permanently destroyed, but for some reason they pop up again and again. This makes me suspicious that PM's have no security guarantees. Their storage must be haphazard if they re-appear. This lack of security increases the likelihood that they can become available to other people.

 

I have no big secrets on my PM's, but maybe other MN users do have (other than those secrets from Stradivari .) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bruce Carlson]

This has happened too many times to me, so I must speak out. My old PM's that I erased months ago keep re-appearing in my PM list.

 

I thought that when I erase my PM's, they are permanently destroyed, but for some reason they pop up again and again. This makes me suspicious that PM's have no security guarantees. Their storage must be haphazard if they re-appear. This lack of security increases the likelihood that they can become available to other people.

 

I have no big secrets on my PM's, but maybe other MN users do have (other than those secrets from Stradivari .) 

The saying in Italian goes; "Fidarsi è bene, non fidarsi è meglio." "To trust is good, not to trust is better."

 

Bruce

[Jeffrey Holmes]

This has happened too many times to me, so I must speak out. My old PM's that I erased months ago keep re-appearing in my PM list.

 

I thought that when I erase my PM's, they are permanently destroyed, but for some reason they pop up again and again. This makes me suspicious that PM's have no security guarantees. Their storage must be haphazard if they re-appear. This lack of security increases the likelihood that they can become available to other people.

 

I have no big secrets on my PM's, but maybe other MN users do have (other than those secrets from Stradivari .) 

 

This is a question best asked to, and answered by, Glenn Hunt.  He's most likely to see a post in the MN news forum (so I will move this thread there), or he can be contacted through the PM system.  

 

Personally, I haven't had this difficulty.

 

For what it's worth, I don't consider the PM system a terribly secure way to communicate... but these days anything sent electronically can forwarded, posted, or reproduced anyway.... and probably altered as well.

[DBurns]

In the interests of protecting the members here at Maestronet, the PM's should be not only deleted but also written over numerous times so that they are permanently removed and wiped totally.

 

Hopefully this is what will be done in the future.

 

As to security, I have been told by kids that went to school with some very talented computer folks, and they told them that there is nothing that presnts itself on the internet that represents a 'closed door'.  It is just a queston of desirability, and if the information is desirable enough, then the effort to get it will follow.   So even governments get hacked.

 

So this is why totally erasing and wiping of files should be the duty of the IT people to protect the website owner from possible legal complications.

[MikeC]

just don't PM anything that you wouldn't want the NSA to see because they will see it...