E-mail Privacy & Security

For years I've used two main email addresses. OE and Gmail. One group of friends always contacted me via one of them but today one friend came through with a message on my other (main) email address and copied the rest of the group.

Recently, a person I befriended on a site also contacted me at my main email address.

It's no big deal because they are trustworthy, but I'd like to know how they are discovering what my main email address is.

Any ideas? And how can I stop others from finding out? Where do I go to hide my main address?

Thanks for any help,

Lavender

 

Email addresses should never be considered "private" nor should anything contained in an email.

The most likely way they are finding your alternate email address is through emails from others in you circle of friends. For example someone in you OE account emails you along with 20 other friends one of which is included in your gmail account. Now the one that you only have in the gmail account can see that you also have a gmail address if the person sending the email uses real names instead of email addresses. This is an example of what I mean. It's just a made up name - Bertha Rasnowski<bertha@gmail.com>

I always use the BCC method of sending when I send to multiple people to prevent others from seeing who all I email to. BCC means Blind Carbon Copy. All the recipients see is "Undisclosed Recipients".

 

Many thanks.

That could explain how one incident happened, and I'll be having a word with a certain person. We're all in the same town, but I didn't know the two groups knew each other.

The one who contacted me from LinkedIn is a different matter. I'm being inundated by spam from there and I still don't know how that "forum friend" knew my address. I'm always very careful about giving it out.

Sheesh! You can't trust anyone these days. LOL

Lavender