Need some advice...
I've had spammers create accounts to spam members through the private message system.
Since they know most admins are ethical and wont read private messages its a perfect spamming route.
Once several forum members warned me of this, I turned conversations off on the forum.
Unfortunately, when members tried private messaging each other, they were sent to a PAGE NOT FOUND PAGE when they clicked on the MESSAGE button on a users profile.
So they used the Activity box below instead, as a form of private messaging. Not realizing its in plain sight on the activity page. 
No one on the forum has ever understood what this activity feature is and it confuses people.
How would you solve this issue???
Issue 1) No one knows what activity is or how they are supposed to use it.
Issue 2) Spamming through the message (conversation) system.
Open to ideas. Thanks!
Comments
Activity is not private. it is actually called the Wall now and there is a permission associated with it.
grep is your friend.
I know... thats why I said:
"Wall" is a much better name for it. I think people will understand that label. Maybe ill just upgrade then.
Wish there was a good way to stop private message spamming though. Thats been an issue with every forum site ive ever run.
Can users FLAG a private message so the admin can see it and deal with it?
I have mixed feelings about about private messaging. it can be useful for quick passing of info, however it is bit of a liability for a site. As site is central location. Pm is private enough that you could pass financial information or anything serious like that.
There used to be inline private comments in V1. This was reintroduced in V2 but architecturally it was a failure project becuase it messed up the object cache an paging. I think maybe it was over complicated for what they were going for.
grep is your friend.