Private Message deleted...but not by me

[BenderBendingRodriguez]

Got an email to say someone called alex29 had PM'd me; checked my inbox, no message. The sole post by this person has been deleted by MN, probably because it was some kind of spam (it was on a thread from last year about Mini Mode). I'm not too concerned about the content of the missing PM, but I do wonder how it disappeared from my inbox without my say so. Can you shed any light on this, MNHQ?

Thanks :)

Your inbox is part of the website not your personal property, so MNHQ have every right to delete stuff from it, especially if, for example, it had a potentially harmful link in it. Do you seriously think they should contact every victim of a spammer individually, just in case they want to keep the crap that's been sent to them?

calm down! i'm not being arsey, i am genuinely interested. i use another website that has pms enabled and the moderators operate a different policy there, so i was wondering whether this was a policy decision or whether there was some kind of automatic link that means that when a profile is deleted, all sent pms disappear too.

I'm perfectly calm, can't quite see why you'd think otherwise from my post? But 'without my say-so' sounded as if you thought you should have been consulted....

Well, to me the words Private Message mean that they are just that - private. I'm under no illusions that MNHQ can't see everything everywhere, but I would expect at least some notification that they are deleting a message from my inbox. It surprised me that this didn't happen, hence the thread.

As I said in my OP, I'm not at all bothered about reading the missing message, having done some basic detective work. But surely you can see that receiving an email saying you've got a new PM, then going to your inbox and finding nothing there, would be cause for surprise?

I just want clarification on site policy, that's all.

They maybe deleted all the person's posts from system in one go? (without reading them)?

That's what I was wondering, Fanjo - whether a deleted registration automatically deletes that person's PMs as well.

jeez rusty you did sound well arsey.

no idea OP, can understand your question tho.

Ok, well I didn't intend to sound arsey, still don't think I did, but obviously others are reading it that way

Imo she didn't. I think this is one of those times where written communication is misinterpreted.

Rusty is not someone who gets arsey :)

I don't know whether Rusty is someone who gets arsey or not but I can see how her first post might sound a bit arsey.

Then again the OP could be read in a "how very dare you" kind of way.

If someone is sending a lot of PMs that are all the same message (with a dodgy looking link) then I expect there is something that automatically picks up on that. MNHQ aren't reading every PM that goes through the system and deciding which to delete and which to keep, but I imagine they have some sort of filter up.

Yes, I was trying to explain that IMO if her post sounded arsey it wouldn't have been meant to be, obviously

Hi all, we'll look into this, If the message was from a spammer then we don't allow members to be contacted in this way so we may have deleted it for that reason. Alternatively the spammer may have messaged other members who had reported it to us, so we went in and removed - does that make sense?

Ruby don't be arsey to Catherine

Thanks Catherine.

And yes, I agree that Rusty is not an arsey poster, hence my surprise at detecting a hint of frost in her response. Apologies all round for any perceived, possible, unintentional and/or unedited huff. How very British

Wow - probably the first time in 6 years on MN I've been in any way controversial! Maybe I should be arsey more often

Anyway, I'm sorry if I was arsey, I really didn't mean to be!

Shall we all have a Kumbaya sing-song and a bong? :)

No, Pinot

A bong . FFS Pinot......