admin can not read p.m.s. the only way to see them is if the sending party or receiving party copies them to an admin. i know this as fact.
There's a line between "can" and "do".
No part of iHub's software is written to allow for the reading of PM's not written by or to you, not even if you're an Admin, save for one exception. Any Admin can read the dialogue between the member and any other Admin so they can see if someone's been warned, they've broken a rule they've broken before, etc.
PM's do reside in our database, so technically we could read PM's if we wanted to. Not directly at the database level. Those kinds of fields don't display when browsed. Or we could write software to let us read them. Or have the system grant access to a PM if you're the author, recipient, or an admin.
We haven't done so, though, and don't plan to and have no need or desire to. The Admins are busy people. I'm sure reading what others are saying privately to others doesn't even exist on any wish lists. Speaking for myself, I can't see how it would be anything but a waste of time.
There is another way, though, which excel mentioned but didn't describe the mechanism.
If someone complains about PM's that were sent to them (I think this is no longer true with the forwarding option), at least when I was doing Admin work and I'm sure others do it the same way since it's policy, we don't take them at their word. We ask for links to specific PM's and permission to log in as them to read those messages and any replies. When I was doing the job, most of the time either the person would withdraw their complaint, or I'd see that the post they were complaining about was a response to an equally strong personal attack.
If I remember right, in excel's case, it was to do some debugging.
So, technically, we can. We just don't. And haven't incorporated anything into the site that lets us do it short of logging in as someone else. Which we also don't do unless asked.
