Concerns regarding providing email address to others.

[airwinger]

To Photo.net Admin,

I recently received(03/07/05 15:59:47 GMT) an email from member-

directory@photo.net telling me that photo.net had provided my email

address to another photo.net member. There has been no email

received from this member as is usual in such cases. I became a

little suspicious as, although, this name appears in my list of

people who are interested in me, I cannot find any ratings or

critique in my portfolio relating to this person. I then checked out

his page by clicking the name link from my list. It appears that he

has been a member since late in 2004 but has not posted any work and

except for a "Portrait photo" and a little about his photographic

interest and equipment, his page is mostly empty.

 

I believe this same member may have requested my email before and

shortly after, at AOL's request, I had to change my AOL log-in

details due to spam emails being sent from within my master account.

 

Would you please check that this person is a ligitamate member of

the Photo.net community and why he should request my email and yet

not make any contact with me.

 

May I suggest that it's about time that a change is made and the

decision to allow emails addresses to others should be in the control

of the said members and at their discretion. Please let me know of

your findings on the above, even, if only, to put my mind at rest.

Many thanks

[peter_daalder]

Steve, I requested your email address just a few moments ago, for the purpose of posting a Feedback Forum reply. I noticed that you are indeed using an AOL email address. As a PN subscriber, you are entitled to use photo.net's email forwarding (I'm sure you know about this). If you want to have added peace of mind, why not use it?

[peter_daalder]

<i>"This information is provided as a courtesy to you as a registered member of photo.net. This courtesy will be revoked if you use it to send unsolicited commercial messages (spam) to photo.net members, to send messages that contain profanity or obscenity, or to otherwise harass or abuse the owner of the address. The person whose address you have requested has been notified, and we have created a record in our database of having furnished this address to you."</i><p>Perhaps I'm naive, but it is my belief that the vast majority of photo.netters would not go out of their way to abuse this courtesy to registered members.<br>There have been discussions about this subject going back to 2002 (and probably before that...). I very much appreciate the opportunity to request another member's email address.

[airwinger]

Thanks Peter, yes I have seen your request has furnished my email address to you but my point being is that it was not with my permission and as it is my personal email, shouldn't it be up to me personaly to whom I allow my contact details.

 

T

[mottershead]

Nobody is compelled to join photo.net. If all they want to do is lurk and read posts made by other people, there is no need to join.

 

If you join, though, you are becoming a member of a community, and one of the requirements for joining is that you provide an email address so that you can be contacted not only by the site administration but by other members of the community, as well. In return for making your email address available, you get the ability to contact other photo.net members. This is subject to some restrictions to frustrate you if you are a spammer intent only on harvesting addresses for bulk email purposes.

 

If all this is troublesome to you and you want to keep your email address a secret that is tightly controlled by you, don't join photo.net with that email address.

[airwinger]

To Brian: Thanks for your response but unfortunately you missed my whole reason for posting this query and suggestion as a large part of my message has been removed by Admin(possibly Peter Daalder-not sure)

I assume the reason for Admin doing this is that I named the person that requested my email in the body of my message. This, perhaps, admin could say if that's why a portion of my messages are missing. I have had contact with many other members via my email but this one just seemed odd as he now has my email but has made no contact to date.

[tijean]

Steve Kay,

 

I have had my e-mail requested by members in the past who have then decided not to e-mail me. The worse I have gotten from the experience has been an e-mail from someone running a tsunami scan (I am a tsunami survivor, please send me photo equipment and money, ect.).

 

I understand your concern. The implementation of a system that would e-mail and ask your permission before sending out your contact information (apologies if I am misreading, but this seems like the application of your solution) would be cumbersome. The other problem is that I have had a variety of helpful, informative, and/or just friendly e-mails from memebers whose names I would not have recognize and may have denied access to if given the chance and worried about privacy.

 

 

It seems to me that it would be easier to just have a free hotmail, gmail, ect. account for things such as this. A bit of a headache, but such is the way of internet privacy. That way, if it has found its way on to a spammer's list, you could delete it and create another without having to notify friends and family.

[beatrice_flowers]

People who throw this kind of panic when someone finds out their email address should stay of the internet. And never leave home either. And consult a shrink... by phone.

[peter_daalder]

Thanks for the laugh, Steve. I can assure you that I'm not a photo.net Administrator and have no ability to remove posts - just trying to be helpful...<br>I've managed to dig up <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=003aE3"> an old thread from the archives</a> to prove that this has been an ongoing issue for some time now.<br>I am very satisfied with the PN email forwarding system and have not experienced any problems in the (almost) last three years...

[dan flanders]

I have had only a few requests that have not resulted in contact. However, if the owner of the address had the option of approving or disapproving its release I believe it would improve the system. I have had only a single instance of spam that could have resulted from release of my address, however it is more likely that it was obtained in a more roundabout manner by googling my name. Nevertheless, the hacks and their ilk seem determined to breach any system that they may wisht to invade. Unfortunately, recent developments in international security, identity theft, and other incursions into civilized life will ultimately require reevaluation of current practice, and such venues as this may prove to be the place to start.