Spam

[martymas]

hi team this morning i recieved an email from the besttechie forums

my question where did he get my email address from.

if he had been asking me a Q on a post of mine i wouldnt mind but i got spam about security.on win 98.

below is his email .he also belongs to another website.

so can some one tell me what is the email policy of this board .

his email.

marty

martymas,

gonzal13 has sent you this email from http://www.besttechie.net/forums/index.php.

First of all I am on another website called expert-exchange where I give out free advice

on win98.

You need Norton Antivirus on your sytem or McAfee. Just scanning will not prevent you from

having a catrofic failure on your hard drive. You also need a firewall. A free one and a

good one is at www.zonealarm.com

Here is a list of free scans:

http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/

http://www.ravantivirus.com/scan/

http://www.ravantivirus.com/scan/

http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_index.php

http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/

http://www.bitdefender.com/scan/licence.php

http://www.kaspersky.com/remoteviruschk.html

http://www.ravantivirus.com/scan/

Joe

[email protected]

---------------------------------------------------

Please note that BestTechie.net Forums has no control over the

contents of this message.

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Regards,

The BestTechie.net Forums team.

http://www.besttechie.net/forums/index.php

[jcl]

my question where did he get my email address from.

He didn't. The e-mail was sent via the mailing feature in your public profile. Thus the BT header and footer.

[cowsgonemadd3]

You can make your email private and only allow PM's...

[thesidekickcat]

I would not have the email icon activated if I were you.

Please read this thread of tenmm's to see why.

Keep everything private that you don't want on Google etc.

I Googled my screen names, while reading that thread, and found lots of my posts and others mentioning my screen name. (Of course there were some that were not mine, totally garbage stuff and are absolutely not associated with me.) On about page two of the expanded search, I found my profile here at Bestechie boards. Luckily it is the public one, and since I don't have any email or other private info on it, it was ok. Disconcerting but ok. I have done Google searches for my screen names before, but not recently, and that was first I saw the profle for here, though I knew about the Leoville one. Also found one listing that I wont check out, as I don't want any possible junk to transfer back to me that I have heard is common for that type of outfit. Anyhow it listed several of us from TTV/G4 in a listing for some online sweepstakes thing. Never heard of it before, and don't want anything to do with something like that, but am curious how and why we are on the Google synopsis of the listing!!!!

I do not approve of these "bots" retrieving info on us, and then publishing it on their sites. Seems to be spyware to me, and I never approved of it.

I just hope no one is stalking me or others, and doing a dossier on all our posts to pull out bits and pieces of information about us that we give here and there over the years. That is a scary thought for sure.

And to think this is happening to all age groups, even the kids. Now that is truly scary, that their public profile info is available on Google and most of their posts, etc. Yikes!!!

Take care everyone, and stay safe folks.

P.S.

I guess I had better make it clear, that I was never accusing B, or any of the other boards I am on, of spying on us. It is the little gizmo bots doing that for the sites they belong to. I am sorry if that was misunderstood. I don't like those "bots" and I doubt I will change my mind about them. Yes I see the use for them, but it still gives me the creeps to know the bots are gathering info in the background. I know that is a naive view, but it still bugs me.

Also when I mentioned the possibility that a stalker, or ex, or anyone else, could obtain lots of info from not only our profiles, but years of posts that have dibs and dabs of personal information. That was NOT talking about B or any other board owner/operator. I was just thinking of all the info available on Google in all the posts the search brings up, could be used by someone for bad reasons. It was in no way referring to anyone in particular. Just a thought about how much could be added up over several hundred or more posts, when we just "gab" here and there.

I also didn't mean to imply that all the posts I found for my screen names on Google came from here. They were from all the boards I have been on since I started with message boards. I am sorry if that was not clear.

I appologize to B for not being clearer in this post. I do appreciate this board, and do not want to create a problem with this. I have edited the other post too.

God bless everyone.

Edited January 22, 2005 by thesidekickcat

[Besttechie]

Hi Everyone,

I am very sorry about all this. It seems to be one big confusion and misunderstanding. So I am going to try to clear everything up.

First off, I am going to explain each bot. (They are not my bots, nor anyones on these forums) They are sent from Google.com and Archive.org. Now, the Googlebot is a bot that index's the whole forum and puts it on Google. This allows the site to grow and be helpful to people who search for things that have been fixed here at BestTechie. The Archive.org bot is just archiving the forum and site so, it can be put in the internet archive. If you go to archive.org and search besttechie.net you will be taken to this page archive.org - besttechie.net search. If you look at some of the links there you will see my old site. That's all that bot is doing. Nothing harmful I promise.

If you have any more questions on that. Post them, and I will do my best to answer.

Now, as for searching your name on Google or any search engine and having it come back with results from boards you are on.

I just searched my name, Besttechie, and it came back with plenty results from all the boards I am at, and all the sites that list my site, etc.

Besttechie - Search Results

Why is that? That is because, all sites, and forums have these bots on them. Yes, TTV forums had them too. So does, SpywareInfo, TomCoyote, Net-Integration, G4TTV, etc. They all have these bots, because if they didn't none of the posts on the forums would be useful, because if you searched Google you wouldn't find anything from those sites. That's why those bots is so important.

I can assure you all that I am not 'spying' on anyone. I am not taking any of this info and giving it out. I guarantee that.

Also, a quick note. When you are in someone's profile on the board and you click the link to email them it does NOT tell you their email address. It just sends them the email. Unless you respond that person will NOT know your email address. Also, there is a way to make your email address private. To do so follow this.

At the top of the forum is a link called 'My Controls' click that

Under Options click 'Email Settings'

Under 'Privacy Settings' tick the box that says 'Hide my email address from other members'

Then click 'Amend My Email Settings'

That will stop people from email you from the forums.

I truely hope that this clears much of this confusion up.

If you have any more questions on this topic, please feel free to post and I will do my best to answer them.

Besttechie

[macmarauder]

here's something that's worked well for me. first thing is that i hate several email accounts. there's plenty of free ones that will work.

i have one for use with forums like this one.

one just for giving out like online contests. yes it gets filled with lots of spam but since no one important gets that one i set it to automatically delete all messages after so long.

i have one for business

and one just for friends and family.

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i know that some places like earthlink set the email adress to you name. do not use an email made out of your name or if you do only give it out to trusted friends and family. i shouldn't say any thing causse i did the same thing. one of my emails is my real name.

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remember that public is public. anyone can view it. so if there's something you don't want public don't put it there. one sugestion is that you can make a little personal page. it's still public but much less so and you can give the adress out to who you want. i'm sure that there's free web hosting out there for a small site like that.

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in the end you have to remember that if some one skilled really wants to, they can still find out anything they want to. but it's a lot of work and the chances someone focusing specically on you are pretty slim.

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these are just some sugestions and my opitions and i think most of the people on this board already know this stuff. if not i hopw it helps.

[jcl]

first thing is that i hate several email accounts.

Me too. Especially my Hotmail account.

[martymas]

hey thanks guys for your input . itactually blew me when i found this email .

not related to this board and some one trying to tell me what security to use

at first i was a bit chuffed.but now ive read your replys i understand .

i went straight my isp and changed my email adress.

not know ing how to hide the one i use here .

which i didnt need to do.

i hate any one spamming me.

me email should be private .

but i can go in now and change the options .

i appreciate all the posts.

marty