Yo, people:
Here in the Brave New World of the Internet you can cause big trouble
by posting personal information on public forums such as this one.
You should refrain from posting e-mail addresses, although I admit I
have done that myself occasionally. I hope that I have only posted
institutional addresses that are available on public servers such as
university campus directories. As Michel Jullian pointed out, the
Vortex-L web archive automatically hides addresses so you do not need
to worry as much about your own address.
This goes beyond spam, which is annoying enough.
You should NEVER EVER post phone numbers, physical addresses, and
especially an "out-of-town notice"!!! For example, never say: "Dr.
Smith, who lives at 1954 Airport Road in Chamblee will be at a
physics conference this week." This might get someone robbed or
killed. We have a high crime rate here in Chamblee. There have been
rapes and murders. Office buildings and houses broken into by
organized gangs that work on a large scale. They use vans to haul
away the stuff. I would not be surprised to learn they are smart
enough to use Google or some other tool to find houses or businesses
that are temporarily vacant. You also have to worry about stalkers.
In your own e-mail account, I recommend you refrain from using an
auto-response message saying you are out of town.
Mindspring (which is also Earthlink) has excellent spam-interception
software, so I am seldom bothered by the stuff, even though my
address is on the front of LENR-CANR.org for all the world to see. It
is plaintext, meaning it is not marked with the "mailto:"; HTML, but
any half-wit robot will find it. I used to take precautions with a
contact screen, but it was not worth the trouble. Other people still
get a lot of spam. So have some common sense, and refrain from
posting their addresses. Send them by private e-mail, or at least
disguise them by writing, for example: "JohnSmith at-sign mindpring.com"
- Jed
