Secure Email and Private Messaging, what are they?

[Rhinestone Kawboy]

Another registered user feature on this forum, is that of emailing a forum member, or, using private messaging. For those unfamiliar with this, here's a short lowdown on them.

Secure Email Address Protection:
If someone would like to email the poster of a message, or forum member, and have it go through normal email channels or servers, that can be done by merely clicking on the "email" button in any of the messages posted by a registered user. The nice thing about this, is that the forum software actually does the emailing, it opens a form already directed to the posters email address, but the one doing the emailing can not actually see the email address unless the recipient returns an email to him or her. This prevents someone from getting email addresses randomly from registered forum users.

Private Messaging:
This mode of communication also uses the forum software to send a message to any other registered user and receive a reply without any disclosure of email addresses (just click on the "PM" button, or open your PM mailbox and compose a message to any forum member). It also allows complete communication back and forth from the message forum without going to your email program back and forth while sending any messages. And, when you are logged in, it will tell you automatically if you have any messages in your Private Message folder by just looking at that at the top of any forum page. You are allowed only so much space for private message storage, so keep it cleaned up when you get more than a few at a time. Also, should abuse happen with the private message system (but we know that won't here), it can always be reported and the forum admin (that's me) can get the offending email address.