Y'all can trust me with a lot of things. Don't trust me to keep private messages private, unless you ask. I don't randomly take people's confidences. I am not a priest. I am not your doctor. I am not your lawyer. This is a public forum and the conversations here are meant to be public. The design and security (or lack of it) is set up that way. Max makes no promise to keep your PMs Private.

You can't just walk up to someone on the street and whisper to them and expect them to keep it confidential. You can't send an email to a celebrity or even someone on this form and expect it to be private unless you ask for confidentiality and they agree. That is the nature of communications. That is the nature of our society.

Why do you expect it to be different here? Especially since that is not in the user agreements and especially since confidentiality is not an official reason for using PMs.

Here is my advice to all of you. Two things.

Don't hold yourself to standards that others not only did not agree to, but that they are probably are not aware of.

And unless you have a greater relationship with the person than mutual membership on this forum, DON'T send anything in a PM you would not want the whole world to see. In fact if it is sensitive information at all, use a more secure medium.

The above is common knowledge and common sense in modern Social Networks. But I know that the Original Poster avoids them. Perhaps that is why the question was posed in the first place?