# Junk mail and privacy



## John-H (Jul 13, 2005)

Did you know that the page on the forum where your e-mail address for forwarding reply notifications is kept, is publically viewable and has been harvested by all the search engines? You can see this if you do a search on Google for your e-mail address.

I somewhat naively thought that because that section requies your password to access, nobody else could see it but I was wrong - it's not a secure area.

Jae has now added some server script to stop search engines from accessing and indexing the "gallery" section where it's held, so the next time Google comes along it should correct itself. However, the area should still not be considered secure if that's important to you.

I have been suffering from Junk mail for some time and I suspect this is the cause. Junk mail spiders crawl over servers through open ports looking for e-mail addresses. I suspect this has happened.

Is there a simple way this area of the forum can be made secure or the e-mail address encrypted? Why can't it be held in the same place as the password? It makes you think about other places where you might have put your e-mail address :? .


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## saint (Dec 6, 2002)

or just do as most do - if you wish email to be viewable....

eg: sa|nt AT myown_email.co.uk


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## John-H (Jul 13, 2005)

But at the moment if you want the system to notify you of a reply you need your e-mail address to be intact and therein lies the problem.


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## scott28tt (Jul 30, 2002)

He's right you know, just google'd all my email addresses and one of them came back with a link to the gallery.

Luckily the gallery page has my old email address, which I do still access from time to time, but it's not my main address.


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## jampott (Sep 6, 2003)

Shall we sue Jae for exposing us to these evil spammers? :lol:


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## phodge (Sep 1, 2002)

I've just googled ny email address and it came back with nothing!

Why am I being left out..?? 

Not that I particularly wanted to be included! :wink:


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## scott28tt (Jul 30, 2002)

phodge said:


> I've just googled ny email address and it came back with nothing!
> 
> Why am I being left out..??
> 
> Not that I particularly wanted to be included! :wink:


Have you got an entry on the gallery?

That's where mine linked to from Google.


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## phodge (Sep 1, 2002)

scott28tt said:


> Have you got an entry on the gallery?


Don't know - so I suppose that means that I haven't! Where/what is the gallery?


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## John-H (Jul 13, 2005)

phodge said:


> scott28tt said:
> 
> 
> > Have you got an entry on the gallery?
> ...


It's where you set up your profile and your sig pic etc. The section at the top includes a compulsory e-mail address along with password info and username.

The section underneath declares itself as "publicly viewable" which includes your option checkboxes and sig pic etc.

What is very misleading is that your e-mail address in the password and username section at the top is also publicly viewable - not on the forum in the normal way but by anyone typing in the correct url for that part of the forum on the web! i.e. you or anyone else can see anyone's details, as if you were them logged on as themselves looking at their profile. As it's viewable publically it's harvestable by spam spiders!

As I said, Jae has added some script to force Google to ignore the section but it's still public.

Does anyone have a solution?


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## ObiWan (Sep 25, 2005)

Goes towards explaining part of my increase in junk mails :x


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