Dear Friends: I am blessed to be in the midst of such
wonderful friendly and open people; however as I go through our daily e-mails
the question of our privacy often comes to mind. Some of us make i far to
easy for those who lurk who do not have good intentions and yes even our
wonderful forum has this type of lurker. There is no way to shield us from
this. There are all kind of lurkers, those who want your e-mail address to
sell you something, those that want it to sell it for a profit, and on and
on. I will give you some examples on how we leave ourselves valunable for
something to happen and the potential is not good.
If in the course of a short time, we have not only given our
names; but our e-mail addresses. And some of us have given our phone
numbers. Others the State in which we live and others their address, their
phone numbers and when they will not be home. Ah, great news for a
burglar! These are but a few of the things we very easily volunteer over
the line. Now, even if the forum had no dubious lurkers, then our browsers
are a good source to aid and abet the unscrublious. Every site we go to on
the internet attaches a cookie to your site, this cookie keeps track of where
you go over the internet. If you need instructions on how to get rid of
your cookies, I will be more than happy to help you in anyway. A good
suggestion is to make sure you clean up your computer daily, that is remove your
History files, remove your cookies and so forth. This will not insure you
safety and privacy; but it sure will help.
Ah, now think about this. You know all those great
things we send to tons of people? Jokes; etc. When we go to open
them we find a long list of e-mail addresses that are sent all over the place,
infect some land all over the world. I am not able to find who you are
with just an e-mail address; but I have a daughter who is a whiz and she
can. I can find you with-in one hour if you give me your e-mail
address and a name. Now that's pretty darn good considering I am
definitely at the bottom of the heap when it comes to computers. I am more
noted for crashing a computer; however I have improved on this
reputation.
Now, here's more food for thought. People who are on
chat lines, bulletin boards or forums, messages are kept, not only by the local
server; but by the various providers of these chat lines, bulletin board or
forums. It is not the intent of the company to do harm; but many of the
messages are put into archive for any to read. Many will be placed in on
the internet search boxes. When I am searching (which I just discovered
leaves me most valunable) I have come across many Molers messages and I wish
they were the information messages only. No friends, some of you would
blush and I would be right there with you blushing at my own.
It is not my intent to scare you; but I do caution you to be
careful. Below is an alert I just received and advise you to read what it
is telling us to do. CAUTION, CAUTION and more CAUTION DEAR
FRIENDS. lillian
Over the weekend a flaw in Hotmail left millions at
risk, their private email vulnerable to anyone with
a browser. Yikes! And that's just the start. In the
past week, four other serious privacy violations
have surfaced. Come to the site to learn why we are
much more at risk than we ever realized.
