Advice - Privacy

© 2000 Annie at NativeCelebs:

I'm sure we've all received mails from a friend, with lots of addresses in the to or cc field. I've gotten mails from celebrities with lots of interesting celebrity addresses and been very tempted to send mail to them in return, but I know it's not nice... 

Anyway, I've been very vocal in getting people to stop doing that, and either send bcc (blind carbon copy), or use mailing lists that cloak the recipient addresses. 

I've recently discovered that I'm human too. My mail program had a bug I didn't know about, and for a long time my bcc's were compromised. I've also sent mail without thinking (my sincerest apologies!), and thus compromised some addresses. 

Out of that, I've come up with a scheme that most of the fans already use to maintain their privacy. I guess it's time for the celebrities to follow suit: 

Make up a nonsensical e-mail address, like for instance geronimo22@whatever.com (make sure it's not a character you've played ;-). Don't put your name in the name field, and when the people you DO exchange mails with adds you to their address book and blanket mails all their friends, nobody knows who's behind that address. Nifty, eh? You may still get some mails, but they probably won't be able to spread it as YOUR address all over the net. 

Then, if you want an official address that you want made public, use one with your name on it - both address and name field. Nick Ramus has a variety of this. He got a public address (I think he only uses that one address, actually) named after a character he played
( BlackKettle@webtv.net  ). 

It's common on the net these days to have many mail addresses. Often one for mailing lists, one for private mail, and sometimes a throwaway you use when you don't want people to know you're interested in certain subjects (you wouldn't believe how many seemingly use one of those to mail me!!!).

I'm going to start taking measures so I CAN'T make a mistake (mailing list software), I now know I'm human (wink ;-), so I have to take that into account and remove the fast and easy way of mailing people. 

In closing, if one of your addresses has been compromised, and you can't deal with the volume of mail, ditch it - after you've mailed your friends with the new e-mail address. Actually, there's an even better idea: Let your fan club person or some other internet representative inherit that address and get another one for yourself. Most ISPs will let you have more than one address too these days, so talk to them if your ISP address has been compromised.

Related: Some advice on forwarding