How so Ravor? It seems rational to me that either the recipient or sender posted it publicly, sent it to an associate, or to a network of "friends". I could be wrong, I'm mostly just throwing out possibilities, but I am curious why you think that.

Unless my memory is failing me, the contant of some of the IMs doesn't strike me as something one could forward in the Shadows safety. Besides, even with today's tech, a forwarded message is clearly marked as being such and I don't see that feature as going away any time soon.

Hmm. That is a point. While I'm not sure wheither I necessarily agree, or, for that matter, disagree with your conclusions, I'll definately keep them in mind while reading those in the future.

That's actually a feature of some mail clients and not others or users discretion. Maybe the forwarder wanted to strip the header and forward information.

I chose to see the Jack Point splashes as mostly humorous and generic but I've also decided that Jack Point is a shadow resource widely used and read in the community. The core fifty or so users sometimes refered to have more powers/features and functions and are expected to reciprocate by posting more information within their ability. Others likely do post comments in threads but like rep filtering software today they don't make it in the "books" unless their comment is flagged as particularly insightfull by one of the core crew. Which may in turn be the road to joining the Jackpoint group proper.

That's my take.

Yep, there's probably a group of prime runners in any given munincipality that are professionals and thus given access to JackPoint. They farm intel for the core posters, which in addition to serving as a resource to everyone, helps them decide when they need to make a focus article, and what on.

Jack-cess?

Isn't that more what the Shadowlands are for? I imagine JackPoint itself being a much more private affair, something that lots of people know about but very few have access too. ShadowSEA is back up and running after the Crash, under the command of a new Sysop, and the Nexus is still the biggest Data Haven out there. Plenty of places for the other Prime Runners to gather information without encroaching on the JackPoint VPN.

/shrug

It becomes a matter of perception and implication. To be relevant, especially in the tone of Jack's rant in the opening of the 4E book and also to fit the scope of something that the runners might actually "see" and therefore being more easy to match palyer knowledge to character knowledge Jackpoint has to be out there in some way. ShadowSea and the Nexus just don't ahve the same ring to them. Heck for the longest time the nexus was naught but a glorified mirror site.