20000 forum users - Awesome Special Event!

[Greenreader9]

@YT_Xaos

Why exactly shouldn’t you share it?

Basically just as @ChrisPAR said. I dare you to post your email address on public forums, and just wait for the spam to start.

From personal experience, the “hello[@]tinkertechlab” address was posted (and still is I think) publicly on the TTL’s contact page. I get a ton of spam to that email now (Thankfully it’s all managed by gmail and not costing me anything). Even the TH email addresses are beginning to get spam now.

@YT_Xaos

I believe moderators (like you) can see other people’s emails, right?

No, we can’t. And that’s a good design feature too. Even administrators on Discourse cannot just easily view all the email addresses in the UI. When a Discoure admin views an email, it gets logged, and everyone with action log access sees it. Email addresses are supposed to be private, even though they are (somewhat) easy to replace.

[YT_Xaos]

@ChrisPAR

does that mean you should?

No, but, what I mean is that a lot of the times your email address is partly public. Hence why I said this:

@YT_Xaos

I believe moderators (like Greenreader9) can see other people’s emails, right?

@ChrisPAR

partly comprised of your name

Heh, my email would never share my name (it has my name and my two last names)

@ChrisPAR

Do you believe email addresses should be more openly shared, or that more people should have a public inbox as a way of communication?

No, I was just asking.

@ChrisPAR

Are you against extreme measures, such as perhaps a paranoia of actively having to maintain multiple identities in an attempt to keep one’s real email address private?

Yes, but I’m not particularly affected by it, so I don’t care if someone that I knew were to do that. However, if they were to do that and complain about it, then yes I would be affected.

@ChrisPAR

Spammers will most definitely hammer your inbox

No need! My teachers already do that:

@Greenreader9

I dare you to post your email address on public forums, and just wait for the spam to start.

Hmm, I’ll think about it!

@Greenreader9

No, we can’t.

That’s weird. On the Discourse official forum, I saw a post that said that moderators and administrators are able to view your email address.

[ChrisPAR]

@YT_Xaos

On the Discourse official forum, I saw a post that said that moderators and administrators are able to view your email address.

Well, the ability does exist; its usage is however logged, so it isn’t used unless there’s a reason to:

@Greenreader9

When a Discoure admin views an email, it gets logged, and everyone with action log access sees it.

As a Leader, you must know that there are some TL4 features that we TL4 users don’t have, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Admin has restricted some of Discourse’s moderation features to moderators as well.

@YT_Xaos

No need! My teachers already do that:

Ah, I see the true meaning of your post then. Who needs spammers when your teachers can fulfill the role perfectly

[Greenreader9]

@YT_Xaos

I saw a post that said that moderators and administrators are able to view your email address.

It’s possible that Admin disabled the feature. Which makes sense, as myself and Oxy have no use for your email (Unless you make us mad that is, but there are other ways to find an email)

[ChrisPAR]

Who needs emails when you have IP addresses? Friendly visit to your house address at 2AM local ISP with a polite request

[YT_Xaos]

I would love a visit from a fellow ChrisPAR.

[anon50163844]

@ChrisPAR

IP addresses

What’s interesting is my location differs between ipinfo and maxmind

[Oxy]

Herbert - 2 more days until regular status

YT_Xaos (email) - every data, not only the email address, should be hidden as much as possible, because the more you intentionally or unintentionally share information about yourself, the easier it is for someone to put together a puzzle about you and abuse it if they wish (impersonation, blackmail, hacking into the system).

Just on this topic, how much did you share about yourself?
where are you from, how often do you go for a visa, country, city, type of phone (new and old), school schedule, school name, etc…

Many say: “I have nothing to hide, I am who I am!”

but the question is not whether you are hiding something, but not to allow others to use your “friendship” or openness against you
, not to mention bots and X countries (such as those against NATO)
that harvest the Internet day and night to collect as much personal data as possible, which they then use to break into various systems or to make statistics such as average earnings and other things that can give them an advantage. The tendency is to collect all important and seemingly unimportant data before quantum computers happen.

---

Through a couple of posts like “clown name” or “last three digits of the phone number” I tried to see but also to show how easy it is to extract information.

Tomorrow, for example, I’ll make a post with “your first 5 digits of your phone number” which say what the year 2024 will be like for you
and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone wrote those numbers…

And then just put two and two together (the previous post plus the new one) to get your number.

Many of you on this topic have the impression that this is some hidden corner where you talk about other “bad” users on the forum as if this topic is hidden so they can’t read it.
Everything you write on this forum is literally indexed on Google in 10 minutes, and it can no longer be hidden.

I don’t want to say that it’s bad to be open and talk about yourself,
but just emphasize that unfortunately, we live in a world where the question is not if some information will be used against you, but when.

[chiucs123]

Hi YT_Xaos,

There was once when the Internet was clean and beautiful with genuine good content (that’s why I got into websites and hosting stuff back in the Zymic ages, yes, that’s before before before what IF is today). Unfortunately, humanity and greed speak for themselves when it comes to social engineering. Like everyone on this forum, we probably never met in real life, we do not know who each other actually are (unless we have a public profile) and that has to be in some sense related to the profile that is setup here for that to make sense.

Social engineering is a very powerful tool to get not just your personal information, but a pattern of your life, your likelihood of making decisions based on your track record of online history (that most people somehow happily provide to Facebook and Google without them knowing).

While you can have a public email address, do not expect that to come easy when gettting real connections, unless that’s someone you have known in the offline world. You could share multiple times your public email, no problem, but do not expect that to be working the same way as your personal email, or you’ll miss the old days.

What’s online, keep it online. Unless a coincidence or opportunity that has sound foundation enables you to convert it safely.

Cheers!

[ChrisPAR]

Let’s start a sharing contest!

I’ll start with my information first; I was quite shocked at finding they were available to the public, and on this forum no less! I don’t know who this “Anon” is, but when I find them…

@anon77371365

Registry Registrant ID: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
Registrant Name: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
Registrant Organization: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
Registrant Street: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
Registrant City: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
Registrant State/Province: AB
Registrant Postal Code: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
Registrant Country: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
Registrant Phone: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
Registrant Phone Ext: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
Registrant Fax: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
Registrant Fax Ext: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
Registrant Email: Please ask the Registrar of Record identified in this output for information on how to contact the Registrant, Admin, or Other contacts of the queried domain name
Registry Admin ID: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY

Billing Email: Please ask the Registrar of Record identified in this output for information on how to contact the Registrant, Admin, or Other contacts of the queried domain name

[Greenreader9]

@Oxy

Through a couple of posts like “clown name” or “last three digits of the phone number” I tried to see but also to show how easy it is to extract information.

I participated in the phone number thing, but I made sure that it would be hard to get my number from it. The last 4 digits of my number consist of 2 numbers only (1112, 2221, 1212, 2122, etc). You know those two numbers, but you don’t know anything else about them. You might be able to guess the area code, and you do know the country code, so that just leaves 3 other numbers as “unknown”. I won’t share those numbers

@Oxy

Everything you write on this forum is literally indexed on Google in 10 minutes, and it can no longer be hidden.

Which is why I PM people if needed (Even though that conversation is also saved and viewable by admins). I have throwaway phone numbers and email addresses, I can always give one of those way to have a slightly more secure way of communicating with someone.

[YT_Xaos]

This whole email thing I brought up has reminded me that I keep getting scholarship emails almost everyday. It is kind of annoying but at the same time I don’t check my email enough to be annoyed.

This is like the fifth time the same university has sent me an email similar to this “Are you —?” “Would you mind confirming your email?”. NO, I will not confirm my email because they keep sending these emails. I don’t even live in Texas and neither do I want to go to texas.

[chiucs123]

lol at least they don’t even know my name

[YT_Xaos]

Seems legit!

[chiucs123]

I’m not going forward with this, anyone who wants can tho, the email’s there lol.
(Just kidding, don’t)

[Herbert]

I quite often use a few emails for my personal and fun/experimental stuff. Like @chiucs123 mentioned, social engineering is on the next level these days. I often don’t get any spam or scam emails because I really check the website before signing up. If I find something fishy, I’d probably use a disposable email. There are tons of free services out there for disposable emails, although I don’t use my credit cards or phone numbers for the service I am signing up for . The whole key to this is to maintain anonymity and check whether the service is good or not. It’s always best practice to check the sender’s email and the content of it before doing anything.

[chiucs123]

Try creating a honeypot mail and collecting as much spam email as you can, without signing up for anything, this way, instead of purchasing a subscription-based IP block list, you get this info fresh and delivered-to-your-door. You need not open the mailbox entirely, just download the headers for the spam ones and pick the domain and IP from there. Using automation scripts or cron jobs you can sort and update the current firewall rules and also conveniently upload this data to Spamhaus and AbuseIPDB via API, all without human intervention. This is a small part of the notification thing that I have discussed with admin some time ago, but that’s another topic

[Herbert]

@chiucs123

Try creating a honeypot mail and collecting as much spam email as you can, without signing up for anything

This would be a great idea if the user is managing something out of the ordinary. But for a day-to-day user, it’s better to use free temporary email sites such as this website https://temp-mail.org to achieve the work.

[chiucs123]

Yes, that’s a great site to use, especially for ultra aggressive email address begging websites.

[Herbert]

@chiucs123

especially for ultra aggressive email address begging websites

Indeed yes lol