Just curious, is it possible to permanently delete private messages in your inbox or can they only be archived?
Anybody?
Bump. Still curious, if its possible to delete old DMs?
How the eff do you PM someone??
Tried to make this as simple as possible. In recommended order
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If all users remove themselves from the PM thread, it will be deleted from the active DB in 24h.
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If a user requests all their PMs deleted I will to go into the active database and remove the PMs in mass (pita). An admin can do it but only one at a time through the site UI and that’s no fun, they also have to open the message and potential to read it. If you need <10 PMs removed (express checkout
) just PM one of us with a link to each topic you want removed. We don’t have any rule about this.
When an admin deletes a topic in the UI it is immediately invisible but takes 24 hours to be removed from the active database. I am sure you guys have seen (deleted by author, will be removed in 24 hours unless flagged) for posts users delete or spam thats get flagged. These are purged from the active DB in 24 hours. Same Story. Because you are sharing a topic, removing it in the database also deletes the convo for the other people.
Here’s the catch
Off-site backups are kept daily for 7 days. The site creates a copy of the DB daily and a script encrypts it with a GPG (key stored in super cold storage). I pull the encrypted backup and store it for 7 days + 1 major update for 30 days. If the site goes down or I need to recover these are the backups I use. This means there’s a chance it could take 7-30 days for deleted topics to be purged from my off-site encrypted backup cycle depending on when in the month the topic is removed. It will be gone from the active site database in 24 hours.
This also means I have to remove PMs from the daily backups, and cold storage. Again, not hard to do technically but a pita. It is recommended to use GPG or some form of encrypted communication if you have privacy concerns. Please don’t ask me to remove a shit load of PMs on a regular basis, just use another form of communication or encryption.
Some people like their PMs and don’t want them removed regularly. I have only done this for 2 users and have given them this same speech.
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