Member has set profile to private - now what?

Ok, an elderly but respected and well known international agricultural marketing expert just joined my site.  The first hurtle was that he is over 75, and the default age limit was 75 so the system wouldn't let him join.  I tried to have no age requirement at all on my site, but it seems like every time I do that, I find something else that doesn't work - most recently the mass mailer.   Reset the maximum age to 100, and sent apology letter - that problem solved.

Now I just went to look at his profile and found I couldn't - "access denied".  Ok, so I logged in with my user account because I wanted to send him a private message - same thing, "access denied".  Ok, so I log in with my admin account - same thing - "access denied".   The admin cannot access the profile to send him a private message!

So how does this work exactly?  Can he send private message to other members?  If so, can they answer him?  Can he make blog and forum posts?   What exactly is the point of a "private profile" on a social network?   I'm not really sure I like this.

Rob

Yes he can
i have my admin account set to private i can browse the site view others profiles send them msgs etc..(only thing no one can see my profile page)
but you do have few ways to contact him when hi is online use the simple messenger or Compose a new message and type in his username he'll get the mail :)

If you know your Profile ID # & his Profile ID # you can always just go into the Database and send him a message that way.  Of course, you'll have to write it with tags in it to get it all to look proper when he sees it, but you can do that.

Suggestion:  Try creating a profile & setting it to private.  Then go into the DB & send an e-mail to that profile and see if you can login under that user name & read the e-mail.  Test it to see if the Profile can send.  Can others respond to e-mails that profile sends.

Sounds like a great way to play with your system if ya ask me.

Wait Prozak.  Your telling me that even though we have a privacy setting that disables using the buttons to send an e-mail, it can simply be bypassed by typing in the username?  Now that is an ingenious way of doing things.  I'm going to lock the house up, but no worries, I'll just leave the keys hanging in the lock so I don't lose them. 

Stupid is as Boonex does in this case.

So he could send them a message, but they couldn't answer it? - or could they?   This doesn't make much sense to me. The privacy levels appear to be "default, me only, public, members, and friends".   Is there any way to get rid of that "me only" option?   What could possibly be the point?  - and the "friends" options - how would you make "friends" if only friends can see your profile - I don't get it.

I know there was a long debate about privacy levels during the development of D7, and I didn't participate much as I was more interested in membership level permissions - maybe I should have.  Could someone explain the logic of this to me - I am a little perplexed.

Rob

yes they can
and yes you can remove the "me only option"
administration/settings -->privacy settings un-check "me only"

Ahhh - thank you Prolaznik

security through obscurity

The best kind...