Can we set up an e-mail alias system?
 

Another FT member was attempting to track me down in real life, based upon my e-mail address.

I wonder, for the protection of us all, if it would be helpful to set up an e-mail alias/forwarding system by which people could send e-mail to us at something like:

[email protected]

and it would automatically be forwarded to our real e-mail addresses.

This way, we could all feel free to post our e-mail addresses without fear of others attempting to track us down in real life, for whatever reason. While these days it is entirely possible to simply set up a free e-mail account with Yahoo, Hotmail or the likes, I think this would be much more convenient. With the exception of this one situation, I have had a tremendous opportunity to correspond with FT members, learning a lot along the way and making new connections. I would hate to lose this opportunity.

What do people think?

d

(Answering your question and continuing from the original thread in TalkBoard...)

Yahoo offers mail forwarding on their Yahoo! Mail Plus product ($30 per year), and if you use Outlook (may just be Outlook XP), you can manage your hotmail messages from there.

I have no problem with people tracking me down in real life. I live in real life.

QL

I have no problem with people contacting me at the e-mail address in my profile and discussing real-world contact.

I do have a problem with people trolling around sending e-mails out to organizations in the vicinity of my profile "from" location attempting to surreptitiously dig up personal details about me, with dubious and perhaps even malicious intent.

d

OK then, why do you still have your location in your profile then?? Wouldn't it just be easier to hide your email address and empty your profile?

For those that want to download Yahoo mail with outlook, try this:

yahoopops.sourceforge.net

Yes, it is disturbing that some members can not respect the privacy of other FT members.

Perhaps the moderators might be of assistance?

That's really an awful comment. It's like saying that if you don't like stalkers in real life, wouldn't it just be easier to never leave home.

I guess this is a situation of "the rest of us" being hurt by a bad apple.

I could do that, but who would have thought that I would have to be concerned about an FT member trying to track me down and making threats in the first place? Maybe I'm just naive, or I've come across too many good apples here.

Anyway, I suppose the solution for now is to not have an e-mail address. If I come across a free forwarding service I'll do that, but it's too much of a hassle to set up another e-mail address and have to start checking it all the time...

d

Why is it an awful comment? It's a serious piece of advice. And sadly comparing the internet to leaving the house doesn't work, when you leave your front door you see people, the net doesn't work like that.

I hope your post was sarcastic because I was trying to offer some serious advice to help Doppy here.

When you are on FT, people in general know how to contact you if you have such information and don't know if you don't have it. If someone has contact information, it probably means they want to be able to be contacted in general.

To suggest that they remove this information and remove all chance for all people to contact them just because of one bad experience is, IMHO, ludicrous. It's the sort of thing that causes more inconvenience to the person concerned and more inconvenience to others trying to contact them.

Doppy: Can you send me an email please?

Thanks.

Sorry Kremmen, but wake up and smell the Internet. I agree, it's ludicrous but it's reality.

It's like complaining you get spammed when you have your address visable on FT, it's not a question of IF but WHEN it will happen. It's not an FT problem, it's an Internet problem.

On the net you don't know who you are chatting with, and certainly in Doppy's case that turned out to backfire. If you really want to be safe online, hide what you need.

We think there is a simple solution - one that has been thought about and really is just a matter of timing for us. In a new version to FlyerTalk, we're likely to be introducing personal email on FT, that will allow you to mask your own details of email but yet allow you to be corresponded to within FT - that is, the program has private mail only available when you are on FT (member-to-member). We've also thought about the relaunch of public email but as noted above, that will probably lead to spam as well as it really is an internet problem, not relagated to only FT. Anyway, it's on the horizaon and thanks for reminding us it needs to be addressed. We do need these reminders from time-to-time.

I like the sound of that solution.

d

In the past few years I can think of only 2 spam emails that seemed to be related to being harvested off FT.

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~ Glen ~

Come visit HERE the most ** FRIENDLY FORUM ** on FlyerTalk. No flame wars, no personal abuse, no substance abuse. Not much of anything really!

ScottC, I think you are out of step here - some people on this board - I can think of at least three on the QF forum - have contacts within QF, and wish to remain anonymous, yet they also wish to be contactable.

By going down the email alias road, ALL FlyerTalkers could be accessible whilst still remaining anonymous.

I do not think the spam issue is a problem, since if spam-bots get hold of [email protected] (in my case) and start sending it spam, then the spam will be redirected to my real email address - so I think that this is a red herring.

But I think that some people on this list desire both anonymity AND accessibility, and having to go through the rigamarole of setting up a Yahoo! or Hotmail address (last time I did it - 3 weeks ago - took about 10 mins each time) is a PITA.

Dave

I'm not out of step at all, it's a decision all people will sadly have to make, either publish your address and face what (sadly) is happening or not publish it and stay anonymous. There isn't anything in between that. The things that have happened here in the past week prove that. A hotmail address used only on FT is a way of preventing anyone linking your identity to your posts. Don't forget that Google knows everything.

It's simply not possible to stay anonymous AND post a contact email address that you use for many other things, if someone means you harm they WILL manage to track you down.

As for spam, the posts in the "only Randy" board make it painfully obvious that spam IS a serious problem, I have had my FT only address here for over a year and delete over 7000 spam messages a month from my server.

Several FT members (myself included) are considering setting up a free email forwarding service, more about that here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/travel/fttr...ML/011406.html

I'm not out of step at all, it's a decision all people will sadly have to make, either publish your address and face what (sadly) is happening or not publish it and stay anonymous. There isn't anything in between that.

There is plenty in between that, and an email alias will do exactly that (unless one is an FT moderator, but then they have access to your IP address anyway and can track you down from that).

It's simply not possible to stay anonymous AND post a contact email address that you use for many other things, if someone means you harm they WILL manage to track you down.

Which is why an email alias system is being proposed. Only FT admins would have access to my real email address (which they now do anyway, even if I choose to suppress it publicly), us minions would only have [email protected].

As for spam, the posts in the "only Randy" board make it painfully obvious that spam IS a serious problem, I have had my FT only address here for over a year and delete over 7000 spam messages a month from my server.

I never said that spam would NOT be an issue. What I SAID was that spam would not be increased by it, since instead of harvesting the email address I now have in my profile, they would harvext the alias. Spam would be neither increased or decreased.

As far as spam goes, I don't have quite your problem - I only have to delete about 160 per day (or that is what MailWasher tells me), so only about 5000 per month.

Dave