From:
http://www.boltonbanter.com/forum/viewtopi...ba278cc728bee3c
Since this has now become public knowledge, we obviously need to clear up some concerns that people have. I'll address those first, and then give you some info on the ban that was imposed last night.
1. The mods or site admin can not access your account through our adminstration area. We have no way of knowing what your password is. We do however have the ability to change your password. You may not have posted for some time, and if you have forgotten it, we can set a new one. It follows that we could then access your account for that brief time. Once you tried your old password, you would realise that it has changed.
2. The mods have no way of viewing your pm's. They are private and we can not access them unless we were logged in as you.
3. Your private details are not divulged in a pm. The 'email' is purely site based.
4. we would NEVER go into any persons account unless the circumstances were extreme (see below).
Now, about the ban that was placed on Mrs R.....
I was going to make a brief statement about this without going into great detail, but since the story is common knowledge, here are the true facts.
We were notified by a third party that threatening pm's were being sent to Mich. Mich had confided in one of the mods, but just wanted it to be kept low key. So much so, that the mod in question didn't even tell the other mods. Copies of these messages were eventually sent to Jamm and in turn, to me. Our first reaction was that Mrs R would be banned immediately.
The problem we had was this. They looked like they had originated from Mrs R, but was Mich trying to frame her? They were fairly convincing, but I couldn't be 100%. So i changed Mich's password, and looked in his inbox. Sure enough, there were 5 or 6 threatening posts from Mrs R to Mich. That seemed conclusive, so she was banned outright.
This morning, Mrs R on 606 and through Stinky was protesting her innocence so much, that we wondered if we had got it wrong. Mrs R had said there was proof if we went into her account....so we did. Her argument was that we would not find anything incriminating in her 'sent items'.....and she was wrong. Not only were the messages in her SENT box but she had about 3 messages in her Inbox which were replies that Mich had sent to Mrs R on the threatening pm's.
Now I believe that Mrs R is claiming that Mich or his mates have hacked into her account and planted these messages. Well......if she didn't send them, why, when she recieved replies from Mich, did she not reply to Mich asking what he was on about. I would If I got these out of the blue. What actually happened is that Mich got more messages warning him that his time was almost up. To be honest, I really don't believe the hacking story, and neither should you. If it were true, this would be one of the most elaborate setups going..... Nice try but it doesn't wash with me.
She was threatening to start a campaign to bombard his works email (she said she had that from months ago when Mich emailed her, perhaps asking for pics of her) with porn and all sorts of crap. She even mentioned what I presume is Mich's real name, to reinforce that she knew who he was. She said that a couple of guys from her workplace would help her and that these guys had said that by getting the address slightly wrong, they would be redirected to to his works mail administrator.
Eventually, Mich made the apology to Stinky that Mrs R was demanding. I should point out that Stinky has not been implicated in what amounts to blackmailing Mich, just Mrs R.
The way this has been done and the wording of the pm's etc convince us that Mrs R did send these pm's. These threats were a disgrace. Most of us may have just laughed it off, but Mich obviously didn't. She was piling on the pressure as the day went on and the time she stated got closer.
That's the story folks. I'm not going to print the pm's because to be honest, they are a disgrace. I know that many of you will be swayed by Mrs R's strenuous denials on 606......christ, even I was nearly swayed, they are so strenuous. But the truth is that she did it. Absolutely no question that she was responsible for this.
If some of you don't believe the mods, then there is nothing more I can do. All I can say is that we have gone as far as we can to prove/disprove both sides in this, and i have no doubts that we have done the right thing. Mrs R was reprieved once before, but she will not be back this time.
As far as the mods are concerned, this matter is now closed. I'm afraid that we won't respond to posts relating to this matter directly, but we will respond to any posts from anyone who has concerns about forum security arising from this matter!
thanks for reading and happy posting.