Hi

Are private messages a thing in echomail? We just got one in fsx_gen and
I'm unsure how to handle it. At present Magicka is showing fsx_gen as
having unread messages, but there are no messages to read because the top message is private and not to me. I can probably fix that, but I haven't
given the option to do private echomail at all. Should I be?

Andrew

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On 05/28/18, apam pondered and said...

Are private messages a thing in echomail? We just got one in fsx_gen and I'm unsure how to handle it. At present Magicka is showing fsx_gen as having unread messages, but there are no messages to read because the top message is private and not to me. I can probably fix that, but I haven't given the option to do private echomail at all. Should I be?

As I understand it, the answer is no.

Echomail is public and netmail is private and that's it :)

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Re: Private Msgs
By: apam to All on Mon May 28 2018 09:01 am

Are private messages a thing in echomail? We just got one in fsx_gen and I'm unsure how to handle it. At present Magicka is showing fsx_gen as having unread messages, but there are no messages to read because the top message is private and not to me. I can probably fix that, but I haven't given the option to do private echomail at all. Should I be?

It is a thing. Echomail areas can be configured for private messages but it's not used a lot and not understood well, at least not by me.

Squish has an option to strip the private bit in echomail if the OP wants that. A bad idea if you really want private messages in echomail but most times the private bit is added in error.

Ttyl :-),
Al


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On 05/28/18, Avon said the following...

Are private messages a thing in echomail? We just got one in fsx_gen I'm unsure how to handle it. At present Magicka is showing fsx_gen as

As I understand it, the answer is no.

Echomail is public and netmail is private and that's it :)

Mystic does have the capability of sending a private message via echomail. I had messed around a bit with it on my personal network here. It is
essentially an private netmail via echomail.

This is something was done a bit back in the 90s in some networks. It was
done more in some of the 'adult' networks, to allow contacting people for getting together. I'm not sure if it's really used anymore though.

Just an fyi... :)


---

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On 05/27/18, Black Panther pondered and said...

Mystic does have the capability of sending a private message via
echomail. I had messed around a bit with it on my personal network here. It is essentially an private netmail via echomail.

Oh... thanks for this... I knew of the send private message option but had assumed it would generate a netmail not echomail...

This is something was done a bit back in the 90s in some networks. It was done more in some of the 'adult' networks, to allow contacting people for getting together. I'm not sure if it's really used anymore though.

Just an fyi... :)

Agreed and thanks :)

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apam wrote to All <=-

Hi

Are private messages a thing in echomail? We just got one in fsx_gen
and I'm unsure how to handle it. At present Magicka is showing fsx_gen
as having unread messages, but there are no messages to read because
the top message is private and not to me. I can probably fix that, but
I haven't given the option to do private echomail at all. Should I be?

Private echomail is possible, though rarely used these days, it seems. In the old days, I used to see it in areas gated to QWK networks, but these days, Synchronet supports QWK netmail, and the specs are freely available for other developers to incorporate.


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This is something was done a bit back in the 90s in some networks. It
was done more in some of the 'adult' networks, to allow contacting
people for getting together. I'm not sure if it's really used anymore though.

I think some QWK networks, which did not have routed netmail, used them
also. You could not guarantee that the message would not be read by a
sysop, however, if the person you were trying to reach was more than one
hop away.


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On 05/28/18, apam said the following...

Are private messages a thing in echomail? We just got one in fsx_gen and I'm unsure how to handle it.

It's technically valid but of very limited utility. Any sysop with a feed to that echo can read it anyway and networks/echo moderators may disallow private echomail as a rule. There's also nothing stopping a third party from going to
a different BBS and reading it there, whether by registering with your name
or just because that board ignores the pvt flag on echomail.

Private messages are more a netmail and local thing.

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