No one is ever in there??

[Enigma]

All communications made through the chat room are logged, and all communications made through this website can be accessed if the need for such an action was required.

[Moose]

Maybe it's not ideal that moderators can read your conversations, but, hey, if you want to talk really privately, it's probably best just to use MSN.

[Jo]

It is actually possible to read them but we usually don't. We would only do this if someone was complaining of receiving abusive messages or something.

Its the same with a lot of chat or forum systems - the technical people who put things in place can usually access every part of it. For example, the people who work at the bank can access all your bank details and the people who work at BT can get onto your phone line.

What happens with this particular chat room system is that ALL messages are available for moderators to see in the admin section for about an hour. But like I've said, we wouldn't actually go and look unless there was a particular reason to do so.

One thing you need to be aware of is that NOTHING is really private on the Internet! Anything you do on a computer can be traced. So, if you want to do something private don't do it on a PC and certainly don't do it on the Internet!

[Rock_Queen]

We would only do this if someone was complaining of receiving abusive messages or something.

or if someone mentioned the matrix?

[sparkly_star]

We would only do this if someone was complaining of receiving abusive messages or something.

or if someone mentioned the matrix?

Yeah....

[captainf]

why, what happened Claire?

[Rock_Queen]

some people *ahem* were talking about the matrix.


then, out of the blue a comment was made in the main "chat" section about what we had just said.

[sparkly_star]

It was creepy....

[captainf]

ah right, so private chat is moderated when theres no need then.

[Jo]

I must have been absent that night. I should imagine it was very creepy

One thing that the chat room lets you do is the popping up of messages on everyones screen. Enigma was doing it one night with messages from the Exorcist, very creepy till I realised where it was coming from!

[Jo]

captain_flynn:
ah right, so private chat is moderated when theres no need then.

captain_flynn, I can't comment on what happened on the 'Matrix' night because I wasn't there, but private chat is not exactly moderated.

Having said that, Private means private from the public chat room - it does not mean that moderators will never see a private chat message in the admin section.

Remember, NOTHING on the internet is really private, not on any site, not in any e-mail, not in any forum. You can run but you can't hide...

So if you have something you want to keep private just don't do it on the Internet.