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ScottFitzgerald

I've just said this in another discussion, but I think it bears repeating in a post of its own.

Can I suggest that you all be careful when posting personal contact details in here. There are people and organisations out there who trawl online looking to harvest such information.

You'll notice that many members of the forum add superfluous characters to their email addresses for the purpose of disguising their real email address, and then a little later in the post tell people which characters are to be removed.

As for personal phone numbers, I'd not be putting them out in the open. Perhaps leave that to forum private messages, or use an email contact first, and then provide a phone number in email correspondence.

I don't mean to sound alarmist, but it is becoming increasingly more important to, as much as possible, be careful with personal information you put out there online.

46HudsonPU

Thank you Scott - as always, good advice. I've actually removed an email 'link' I had in my signature "Mailto:...), just to be sure that it does not get harvested in one manner or another...

Jon B

Scott and Rick, are you saying that we aren't really successfully masking our e-mails by adding "X" or "HET" to our addresses, then telling folks to remove these prefixes before mailing? I assumed this would defeat the spam harvesters.

ScottFitzgerald

Hi Jon. No, that's what I was advising people do in the third paragraph. But what prompted me to post this was seeing quite a few posts with undisguised email addresses, and with phone numbers given.

46HudsonPU

And, the email in my signature block was not 'masked'. It was input thru HTML, so I was concerned that it could be 'harvested' as easily as if I had just typed it into a thread...

TOM-WA-

BY NOW YOU WOULD THINK THAT A LITTLE COMMON SENSE WOULD BE SUFFICIENT.

I NEVER UNDERSTOOD THAT WHOLE HET THING IN FRONT OF E MAILS..

AND I WOULD THINK THAT THE LAST THING A "HARVERSTER" WOULD WANT IS ANY PRIVATE INFO FROM AN OLLD COOT IN THE HUDSON CLUB

TOMBAR46@MSN.COM 206 351-2649

LOL

ScottFitzgerald

Tom, they want any information they can get, and they don't much care who it is, or where you are. They just want the 'live' details to sell, or pass on malware, etc, etc., etc.

MikeWA

Rather than the "remove the xyz" routine, I find it easier just to put it in as garfunkel at hotmail dot com.

ScottFitzgerald

@MikeWA Yes, that's another way to do it.

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