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Private messages?

Johnsmum

I've emailed Jim already about this, but it would be nice to know what others think. I would like to have a way to send a private message to another poster, so that for instance we could make an arrangement to meet up in real life if we live near each other. I have started a discussion in General Chat about meeting up at the Autism Show in June, but to make this work we probably need a private way to send mobile number to each other, so that we can communicate at the show.

What do others think about this?

  • maybe a good decision to disable private messages to protect the vulnerable people here

    after all, if there's nothing sinister in what you want to say then why not publish it for all to see? it's not ideal but not a big problem if you've nothing bad to hide

  • Thanks Jim, I do understand your reservations and problems. I am happy to work out a place to meet at the Autism Show without exchanging mobile numbers. Probably the best place to meet would be by the NAS stand. Of course it may be that no one responds to my invitation, which is also fine!

  • Hi Johnsmum,

    Just thought I'd share where we stand on this issue at the moment here as well as in my email.

    I'm afraid that the decision was taken to protect the privacy of users for their own safety and the safety of others. This is because people may want to use private messages to sell products to parents or some users may be too vulnerable to allow private communication.

    For this reason we're not able to allow people to share any personal contact information. I'd suggest you might be able to arrange a particular place to meet at the Autism Show, which wouldn't require the sharing of information. However that would have to be arranged in public.

    We've already had a number of problematic incidencies where people with particular business interests have tried to contact individuals directly so we have to keep a careful boundary around personal contact.

    Frustrating as this might be I hope you can understand where we're coming from. I'm happy to hear what other people feel about this issue and to bear that in mind with future developments but I'll also be honest, it isn't a change that could happen soon and without some further detailed legal work and development changes on our side.