Far as I am aware smogon dot com is a public place in every sense of the definition and therefor nobody should have any reasonable expectation to privacy when using smogon dot com. Now, I'm not a lawyer but this clearly contradicts with your statement. In what situation exactly would viewing public things? on a public forum? constitute illegal behavior?
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Yes, it's public but you're taking the definition to an extreme. They're called private messages for a reason. The only person who could read them that isn't part of the conversation is the server owner and I can assure you that he doesn't want to go around reading people's private conversations. Even if private messages didn't exist, there are other services.