Posted by Rick on January 23, 2002, at 20:48:35
In reply to Re: Posting of email addresses, posted by Dr. Bob on January 23, 2002, at 18:54:45
> > I liked Dr Bob's idea (if I have understood it) that there could be some way of setting up something so you could be emailed by Board members, whilst staying anonymous.
>
> Right, that's on my "to do" list. Think of it as email going to a posting name rather than an email address. It would be "from" the server. Also:
>
> 1. The server would automatically include the sender's posting name, so the sender wouldn't be *completely* anonymous. The sender and the recipient would each know the other's posting name.
>
> 2. Everyone would have the option of not receiving such emails. The default, in fact, would be not to receive them.
>
> 3. If anyone abused this feature, they would be blocked from sending such emails.
>
> How does that sound?Sounds like a great system to me.
>
>
> > > If anyone knows how to fix this please let me know. It might make me much less paranoid.
> >
> > All you have to do to change this is log onto your Yahoo account, the click Options on the left, then click Mail Preferences under "Personalization." Then change the "From Name" at the top to whatever you want people to see next to your address (I just deleted my last name), and click Save at the bottom right. To make sure it's working right, you can send yourself an email.
>
> Thanks for explaining that. Hmm, would you mind spelling out exactly how to set up, from scratch, an anonymous Yahoo account that forwards to another account? That might be nice to include in the FAQ...Three days ago I would have said "yes", but as I mentioned in another post I can no longer recommend the auto-forwarding option since I just recently discovered that it can end up compromising one's privacy. Specifically, I learned that if for some reason the final-destination server bounces an email Yahoo forwarded, then Yahoo sends an error message back to the *original sender*...complete with the intended forwarding address AND IP address!! I immediately switched the account to POP3, wich of course is more complicated.
Ironically, I discovered this when my ISP bounced one of Psycho-Babble's thread-update notifications back to P-B (probably because the ISP's spamguard was activated after I received a lot of the thread-update notifications in a single day). The bounce notification Yahoo sent back to P-B included both my intended forward-to address AND my ISP address!!!!
Too bad, because the forwarding option is such a nice, simple and convenient one.
I could explain how to set up the anonymous Yahoo account, sans the forwarding option, but Yahoo pretty clearly walks you through all the steps. Just go to www.yahoo.com, click Check Mail in the upper left, and then click Set Up New Account and follow the instructions. After the account is set up, go into Mail Preferences and make the simple change I described above to prevent your full registered name (which is supposed to be your real name) from being displayed in emails.
Rick
poster:Rick
thread:2697
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20011216/msgs/2730.html