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On Wed, 6 Jan 2010, Rob Beard wrote:
but I wouldn't want my personal address, phone number etc being plastered all over a public mailing list.
Don't ever, ever post it to anything, anywhere that you might think is remotely public... Phone numbers in particular (Trev, yours is all over some boating forums and trivial to find via google), and it's now extremely easy to narrow down phone numbers to towns too (Ofcom publish lists) Google and other search engines are very good at indexing and holding onto information. The Internet never forgets.
I give an occasional lesson/lecture to groups of young people about managing your "digital footprint" - every time it takes me longer to prepare as I get so much more information online for each person now.
I know what's online about me as I regularly check - it's sometimes interesting to google your own name, email, phone number, etc., but beware - googling something you think isn't online leaves a trace, and some people have deliberately setup pages and pages of what may appear to be nonsense, randome text, names and numbers, but they get indexed by the search engines and if someone sees a page with a result and clicks on it, they then check the logs they get an indication of the fact that someone is searching for that something, so that something becomes significant...
That's how "Belle du Jour" was outed recently...I've had the same domain/email address since 1995. It's hard for me to be anything but public...
Gordon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html