There certainly is! Click on User Control Panel > Manage Attachments.
OOoo. there they are. thank you.
Of course I meant my problems. You may have mistaken me for someone who cares about the general good of all such as your concerns for security risks and filling up the database appear to address. 
Thanks for all the good explanations. This may be the final impetus to set up my own web site.
A final wrap-up for those of you who have been avidly following my misadventures: YES images can be indirectly passed in Private Messages, BUT ONLY IF they are already stored somewhere on line so that a URL link can be forwarded in the message. It turned out for my limited purposes that a service such as PhotoBucket made much more sense than establishing a personal website just to store a few images.
My thanks to Kurte, Zenta, Innerbreed, Robot Dude, and Snailkeeper for their patience and assistance in guiding me to this happy solution. 
What do you suppose she does with all those snails anyway? 
escargot!
Alan KM6VV
I just joined another Forum (for Heli’s) which is also “Powered by phpBB”, and they have a “download post” in the header of each message on the forum.
“[size=150]Download post[/size]” is great! Can we have/get it?
Thanks!
Alan KM6VV
I also meet the criteria but I can’t post links.
Thanks
It should be possible to post normal links like:
www.lynxmotion.com
With regard to the “Download post” - we’ll check out if the mod is still available for the latest version of pHpBB. Can you send a link to a forum which has that feature?