I did a google search for my e-mail address to see what I would find. I found several links to forums and places I posed on obvously before I learned it's bad to post your e-mail address on a forum. But yet when you go to the links they aren't really forums, but listings of posts. Ho do I remove these results from searches: link removed well by me
Thanks.

This post has been edited by toruser: May 5 2008, 11:40 AM

The easiest way by far and the most effective is to change your email address and then only let responsible friends or relations have details of it.
Keep a "disposable email address (one that you no longer monitor 100%) for sites etc that insist upon an email address,,,,but do not issue them with your main one!

Hi Toruser

Edit: Hehe, can see Paws came up with a good idea, better than mine.....

Best option I can see, is visit those forums once again. If you are still a member, look for a option to edit your post.

If thats not possible, try contact the sites owners, and see if they will delete your email address.
You can start with the link you provided, as your email is shown there aswell

Don't think there are other possible ways to erase the traces.

Regards Abydos

This post has been edited by Abydos: May 5 2008, 11:18 AM

Thanks guys. I'll pay those forums a visit and see what I can do.

Understand it may still take some time, even if you are successful at changing every occurance. The reason why is Google, as well as all the other search engines, keep pages in cache for some time (I don't know how long).

You are wise to attempt to remove those everywhere, but, for sure, the best bet may just be to use another address.

Are you just concerned at this point, or are you getting an increase in spam?

It's not the amount, it's just that no matter if my computer has no trackers in it I still get some spam. I've heard of people that have said they never get spam. I usually go to the same sites and have the same reutines. And well after I made an earlier thread asking if my ports were secure I thought hey wonder if what is out there on me. My defenses of the comptuer are good so now let me see what I can do outside. And besides it's not good to have your e-mail address in google for all the world to see anyway.

I think you are confused. Trackers on your computer have nothing to do with spam. Spam is unwanted email that is sent from someone (or some compromised computer) that has your email address - that has nothing to do with anything on your computer. "Trackers" or "tracking cookies" on your computer have nothing to do with spam, but might have something to do with spyware. However, most are legitimate tracking cookies so you don't have to keep entering your user names and passwords, for example.

Bottom line, if spam is being sent to your email address, there is nothing you can to from your computer to prevent it. You can use a spam blocker so you can keep your inbox clean, I recommend MailWasher Pro, but they only help you manage what has already been sent.

Your address is on spammer's lists - along with millions of other addresses. It is unavoidable.

Do note that some email providers and ISPs have been known to sell, trade, or otherwise give away addresses. Not cool.

Also note that if you send/forward a joke "To:" or "CC:" 10 people, and they send it to 10 people - now 100 people have your email address - and eventually so will a spammer.

That's very underhanded of an isp. How do I know if mine is doing it? I do have something already called spamfighter that sends spam to a folder in Outlook. Yeah those e-mails that says forward this to as many people and something good will happen for you at 12:45 the next day. Some are demeaning in that they say if you only send it to 2 or less you must live in a cave. I don't respond to those send to messages.

But anyway again it's not a good idea to have your e-mail come up in a google search anyway. I did find one out the three posts google found and I edited the e-mail out. The second that forum had no edit post feature so I got an admin to do it. Finally, the last one is of a sub-forum that no longer exists on clancore's forum. So either with this archiving google does these archives might go away in time now that I've edited things, or not. But at least we're doing what we can.

I mean when you think about it this is not really a big deal, but now it's a little project to work on. And hey I might learn something about the google archiving system.

Let me clarify - This assumes your ISP is also your email provider, and probably not something you have to worry about with the major providers.

The way to find out is simple, create a new email address, and don't use it for a couple months. Then see if you start getting spam addressed to that address.

Not just those - I am talking any email. If you send an email to Mom, Dad, and 8 others, and you did not use BCC (blind courtesy copy) then you just gave to each those 10 recepients, your address, and the addresses of the other 9 recipients, including Mom and Dad's! If any of those were "private" email addresses, that makes you part of the problem! If any of those recepients forward your email to all their buddies without cleaning it up first, your email address, and your Mom and Dad's addresses, are in the public domain, out of your control.

Agreed. And FTW - adding spaces around the "@" will not keep the search engines from finding you - they know how to skip the spaces.

No, but it can be a hassle if the bad guy spoofs your email address, and sends out a few million spam messages with your name in the return address! That will bring some unwanted attention down on you quick, with you having to quickly prove your innocence. You get blamed (or eyeballed pretty hard at first) for something you did not do, but then, because some folks believe everything put in front of them - or because they are mad at you for sending spam, you start getting hammered with 100s (1000s?) of email responses - which may cause your ISP to delete your email account. These are extreme cases - but not rare by any means.

Then there's disposable email accounts.

That e-mail address use to be our only address, but then the family and I created seperate e-mail addresses to have more privacy. The me old address has now become the place for newsletters, confirmations, and subscriptions. Our seperate address are mainly for our own friends. We might delete that address like you suggested. Before I do that though, I did get a a reply back from one of the forum admins that helped to edit the post with the e-mail address in it. He suggested that maybe if I go to the thread and simply reply with a blank post or the word bump google might take a second look at the threads it has archived.

Hmmm, that's not one of my areas of expertise, but that does make sense to me, certainly, worth a shot. I can see it taking a few days to work through the system, so give it time.

And while that's being done I can also see what I can find about the google archiving system to see if we can learn some more about how it works, etc.

Well - if you figure out the algorithms that make Google work, then call Google - they have a job waiting for you.

But basically, as I understand it, the way all the main search engines work is through "crawling" websites, looking for pages and "keywords" to put into cache. It sits in the cache (accessed by anyone clicking the "Cached" link button for each result) until some threshold is reached that signals the Google kernel to fetch that cached item and index it - that is, look for new or changed "keywords" (the words we enter into the search box, like email addresses).

If there are no other matched keywords on that page, it may take a while before the page is called in to be re-indexed/refreshed throughout Google. If the search string (what you enter into Google) used is a common word or phrase, then the pages it hits on will be refreshed more frequently.

BUT, certainly Google is keeping track of what is typed in the search box, so every time you enter that email address in Google, you increase the popularity of that "search string" - keeping your email address alive!

Only Google knows exactly what criteria it uses to decide what keywords carry the most weight so we can only guess how long it will really take. I would wait a couple days, then see if your address shows up in the other search engines too - Yahoo, Ask, etc.

What do you mean they can spoof my address? How do they do that?

Guys it's been a while since I updated you on my progress. Well out the the 3 links (Lucasforums, Clancore, and Tribalwar thread) the Clancore one disapeared around about the time I asked the admin to add a new post to the thread. So it was just down to Lucasforums and Tribalwar thread. The Tribalwar thread I was only able to edit on since it was so old of a thread (2 years) in order to add a post you have to get permision from an admin. The Lucasforums one was edited and a new post added.

In all I believe it was a bad idea to add new posts to the Lucasforum and Clanore threads. Just yesterday the Tribalwar thread disappeared from the google search, but the Clanore one reappeared and I believe I have a theory why. I have a theory about Google's archiving system. I believe google keeps an original archive of the thread and the most recent change to the archived thread. After all it would make sense it could only keep the most recent change in that it would take up more space for google to keep track of all prior changes.

So what I think what happened is this. The clanore thread disappeared around about the time the admin there added a new post. I believe google was just then recognizing the e-mail address was edited out and had not yet recognized the newly added post. Same for the Lucasforums. And I believe the Clancore reappeared because it has the original archive and now that there was a new post google archive discarded the prevous chagne that of the e-mail edit. You see it only at that point remembered there was a new post.

So I've asked the admins of the two remaining threads to simply delete the new posts they made and edit the area of the post that had the e-mail address. The reason for this order is if you were to edit the post then remove the post they made that post removal would be the most recent change.

I await to hear from Clanore's admin I've been talking to, but as for the Lucasforum admin he has said even though it's my thread I created it still has info useful for someone with my game question. I will propose to him that I will make a new thread with the helpful info in it. Thereby he would have no reason to keep this old thread. Or of course he could just delete the last post he made and redit as I've asked.

The Tribalwar thread that was only edited out the e-mail address on disappeared yesterday. I had edited it on the 5th of May 2008. So you can see how long it took google to recognize the change. If I would've been more patient and not asked the admins to add a new post I might now not see any results come up with my e-mail address when I call it up in google.

I hope to hear from these two admins soon and hopefully clean up my suggestion to add a new post and this time makee sure the edit goes through like the Tribalwar did.

In the end if all else fails like it's been suggested I will need to change that e-mail address. It's a last resort for me in that it would take some effort to find all the places that address is subscribed to, recieve confirmations from, and newsletters from. And it would also take time chaning those accounts over to a new address and all that mess of doing so.

I'll keep you guys updated. I hope like the protecting ports question thread I made this thread helps others with this situation too.

It is fairly easy to make an email "appear" to be from another address, such as your address. Badguys do this so their own addresses are not identified.

Spoofing causes a lot of problems, similar to those caused when your identity is stolen.

They instruct their botnets to send out a million emails using your address. Users report that you are spamming them so your ISP shuts your email and maybe even your access down. And it can make a lot of people mad at you for spamming them. Just another reason to keep email addresses private.

Sorry, but I am not about to post how it is done.

This post has been edited by Digerati: May 18 2008, 07:31 PM