Someone just PMed me a welcome message.
When I tried to reply, it I got the message, "You do not have permission to send private messages."

I checked the help and it gave me three reasons.

"There are three reasons for this; you are not registered and/or not logged on, the board administrator has disabled private messaging for the entire board, or the board administrator has prevented you individually from sending messages. If it is the latter case you should try asking the administrator why."

I am definitely registered and logged on.
I don't believe the admin has disabled PMs for the entire board.
There shouldn't have been a reason to block me from sending PMs, as I haven't really done anytihng yet except introduce myself.

What's the deal here?

It may have something to do with AutoSpam.
Normally you need a certain number of entries before gaining access to the entire site...
I could be wrong.

anyway. welcome and such. just keep chopping and you'll have full access eventually.

That seems rather... paranoid.
I'll keep chopping, naturally, but it just seems silly to be unable to return a PM
to someone who was nice enough to welcome me via PM.

Well, thank you for the welcome, and thank you badcop for the welcome PM.
Sadly I'm unable to reply to you properly at the moment.

It protects users from being spammed. It's a good thing.
Welcome to PSC.

I miss spam. Some of the most interesting comments came on spam threads.

Yeah.. True dat.