Legal Question in Technology Law in California
Interception of Private Messages on a Message Board
A company operates a website that provides for a discussion forum for owners of a particular product for whom they are an exclusive sales agent. Historically, this website has been highly censored as the company does not want to allow any information about 3rd party sales of this non-deteriorating product (basically resales from other owners) which are available at half the price.
There is also an independent, owner-operated discussion forum at another website which offers much more information of use to owners and allows free, unrestricted communication as there is no commercial interest.
The censored forum run by the sales agent provides each registered user with the ability to send ''private messages'' through the discussion forum to other registered users. Several people have, on occasion, seen posts by people that have detailed answers on the independent forum and have tried to send a private message with a link to the independent forum. It was later found that the company which operates the censored forum has a policy to intercept and purge these private messages which contain links to the other website before the recipient gets them.
Are these private messages protected from interception in any way?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Interception of Private Messages on a Message Board
In general, unless perhaps the company has posted policies or a contract with its users to the contrary, they can run their ownp private message board however they want to.
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