What's new
TerraForums Venus Flytrap, Nepenthes, Drosera and more talk

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

I googled my e-mail address to see what came up and found something weird

Clint

Stay chooned in for more!
Hey guys. I typed in Cparsonsss@hotmail.com into google to see what came up. I was bored.

I got three links. The third link says: Email Spider Easy Targeted Email Extract Expert hatman7@prodigy ... as the title, and then it lists my e-mail address as well as a few other people from this forum. I clicked and it wants me to download it. No thanks!

I typed in hatman7@prodigy.net since it was in the title and found out that it was to Shushan's hat retailers that imports specialty hats. No threat there but what is up with this? I feel so used.... :(
 
Unfortunately, you need to get used to it. Even without having any access to your computer or email, your address can be spoofed and used by "anybody". There's plenty of tools that recognized spoofed addresses and filter them out as spam, so there isn't too much worry about being tricked. However, my email domain which is used by... maybe 7 people over its history is blacklisted in several places because someone spoofed having our domain in spam, and people reported it.

Email has a lot of potential for gross misuse. All you can really do at this juncture in time is to stick it out. A good spam filter (nominally, one that uses some accurate probability filter and works off of a point system) helps, but as for some of the other flaws of email, they simply exist and you need to deal with them.

Another thing to watch out for is that someone isn't ACTUALLY using your email address to send out spam, because then your computer's security has been jeapordized and it's being used as part of an evil spam-sending zombie empire. Luckily they catch the "masterminds" behind zombie networks evey now and again...
 
By having your email up there in this post you are "giving it out" to anybody, everybody, and computers. Crawlers compile these emails and sell them or use them for their own spam. That is why a lot of people put name(at)place(dot)net or something to try and hide it from the crawlers....
 
So I guess It's nothing to worry about if I'm not getting much spam or popups anyway?

Thanks! I guess I got paranoid.
 
pretty much... be more cautious about putting your whole email publicly like that if it worries you... That download BTW is a basic text file... that has MANY emails listed... That email that you quoted just happens to be the first on the file. So that is just another "found" and "listed" emails by whomever/whatever did yours...
 
Ha, i searched mine AND my grandparents' & got nothin... *proud of self*
 
nothing here either :)
 
aside from a few forum locations and my dev-art Furr affinity accounts, i got nothin back from mine :3
However, if i google my pen-name, i get lots of odd stuff from my past XD
 
Last edited:
However, if i google my pen-name, i get lots of odd stuff from my past XD

One of the reasons I use names that are almost impossible to search for and find anything of meaning. Est is hard enough, in other cases I have ones that are probably virtually impossible to find any useful information on me through. :p On the other hand, one of my main names easily connects back to me, which can be kind of fun to use and see how it affects my search engine footprint.
 
  • #10
One of the reasons I use names that are almost impossible to search for and find anything of meaning. Est is hard enough, in other cases I have ones that are probably virtually impossible to find any useful information on me through. :p On the other hand, one of my main names easily connects back to me, which can be kind of fun to use and see how it affects my search engine footprint.

Ironically, all my forum names are names that only I use. NeciFiX is my own invention. Type that into Google and you'll get all my old stuff! But, Google thinks NeciFiX is a spelling issue and I meant to say "Netflix" ironically again someone called me Netflix once on a forum LOL!
 
Back
Top