I was messing with the Unregistered/Unconfirmed permissions yesterday. It's odd how those settings carried over as they are only for guests. No one that is Registered should be a members of that group. Should work now.
@lmm1967 I can't start any conversations. That message shows for me when I go to inbox and click start a conversation. Otherwise the option to start a conversation is just missing for me when looking at someone's profile.
Sorry for the confusion, I guess I should've started a new thread with this start conversation issue. The forums being marked private is a separate issue that is now corrected.