kevin Site Admin
Quit Date: -
Posts: 9538 Location: cincinnati, oh
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Posted: March 17, 2006 11:49 PM Post subject: advisory for msn messenger users |
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your msn messenger id is your email address, and if you put that email address in the box in your profile that says "MSN Messenger:", it will appear in plain text on your profile page. this means that anyone can read it, and, more importantly, googlebot (and other search engine robots) will be able to read it and index it. if a search engine robot indexes it, it will be visible in the search results on that search engine under certain circumstances: for instance, a member just told me that she put her email address into the search box at google, and was shown her profile page from this site.
this is not a security risk, but it is a potential privacy issue, so, if you don't want your msn messenger id/email address to be public, don't put it in that box in your profile, or, if it's already there, take it out (if it's already there, and has already been indexed by one of the search engine robots, it will stay in that search engine's index until it's purged, but at least it won't be re-indexed). _________________
keep choosing life!
kevin
the zen of the quit |
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