I received a PM from a member this morning, concerned about the personal nature of a PM that they received from another member. So I thought I would post a note here, just reiterating a few things for everyone’s benefit.

First, be assured that the only personal information that is available for another member to view online about you is whatever YOU post. You do not have to fill out anything in your profile at all, specifically including your email address. And you can delete anything you want to, at any time. However, you do need to be ‘cyber smart’, and not post things in messages that could make you a target.

Second, you don’t have to accept PM’s at all, from anyone. It’s just a setting in your profile.

Third, we get people from time to time who only register so that they can send advertising PMs to members. If you receive any such PM’s, please notify me and the person will be removed as a member immediately.

Fourth, if you receive a PM from another member that makes you uncomfortable, for whatever reason, you can send me a note about it. We will take a look at it and If I have received other complaints about the person, they could be removed from membership, or if the situation is serious enough, they will be removed immediately. You can address the situation yourself though, also. If you do not want to receive any more messages from this person, click on their user name, which will bring up their profile. Then hit IGNORE. That will block them from sending you any PM's. In addition, you won't see any public posts they make. That has occasionally been helpful to members in the past.

If anyone has any questions, please feel free to reply here or to send me a PM.

Should make this a sticky.

It is really sad we have reached a point that a post like yours had to be written. Whatever happened to "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all".

ndfan--that actually was not what the immediate concern was, but it could apply to that situation also.

Scubaman--have you personally had any issues lately with PMs? Not sure it is currently a big issue, just not something that had been addressed formally for a while, so I thought it couldn't hurt. You can respond by PM if you want..

Unfortunately PHPBB's like this one are plagued with the spammers. I also moderate and own one and I go through times when the spammers are signing up left and right.
Good luck!

Yes, for sure.

Hi. I have edited my post to reflect a little better, what the immediate cause of my posting this thread was. Not really 'harassment', so much as "unwanted". Anyway, it is something that comes up occasionally.

I just went to remove my email address, and it says it's a REQUIRED field.......??

Leave empty the "publicly displayed email address" field and people won't see your email address.

It is. Thanks.

Sorry my note wasn't more specific.