I would like to know if PM's are private and available only to the artist to whom they are sent. Are these messages also avaiblable to the site administrator and/or the imagemods to screen?
Thank you.

I can tell you that I am certainly unable to access tham and I'm sure none of the other mods can either. I imagine caedes would have access to anything and everything as the site administrator, and pehaps xentrik does also? But I could be wrong.

As has been stated before, the person or persons we know as 'caedes' is the all-seeing-eye. This is why he (they) live in Langley...

Langley? I thought that was a weekend resort for Caedes. I must have been mistaken.

I am aware of caedes having checked on PMs in past himself when there was an issue of improper/abusive PMs. That said, he can only check on ones that still exist on the site (haven't been deleted). I cannot check up/read other people's PMs, and I'm also certain caedes would not unless there's an abuse issue. Think of how many PMs there are! You think he'd have time for that? =D But rest easy, no one is watching.

xentrik is correct. I can conceivably read any PM's that I want, but I only do so if there is a serious problem. I haven't even made an easy interface to access the PM's, so I actually have to go into the database and extract the messages with complicated SQL queries. It's not very easy to do even when I need to. Having said that though, I feel the need to emphasize that the PM system is in no way supposed to serve as a secure communication channel. You probably shouldn't be sending CC info or passwords with it.

Thanks for the quick and informative responses from all above. Much appreciated. Have a great day!