How do I remove my email address from a malicious blog post?

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Sadly, this kind of harassment isn't all that uncommon on the internet, basically because it's so easy to do. Normally I see it among teenagers or kids with nothing better to do.

It's also one of the reasons I firmly believe that the days of having a single email address are over. As part of maintaining our privacy for both this, and things like spam, I advocate a multiple-email address strategy that would allow you to discard the email address being used in this harassment. More on that in my article over on TamingEmail.com: How many email addresses do you need?.

Your options on what to do next are limited.

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If you truly cannot find the location that your email address has been posted, then, to be honest, I'm not sure what you can do, other than change your email address, and completely delete or ignore the old one. It's extreme, but it reminds me of similar situations via telephone where people who've been receiving threatening phone calls change to an unlisted number.

It works, simply because that old email address is no longer you.

However, I would not give up trying to find the source, because once you have it there are a couple more steps you can try.

First, I don't know the nature of the emails you're getting, but if you feel comfortable with it, explain the situation and ask the sender where they found your email address. This must be done with caution, and only if you feel comfortable doing so. (I'll also talk about involving law enforcement in a second, and this might be a step that they would help with.)

Keep searching. Use several search engines; Google, MSN, Yahoo, Ask.com, and search for your email address. Use one or more of the blog-specific search engines such as technorati. It's possible that the site containing the address will eventually be indexed by one or more of them, at which point you can find out exactly where it is.

Once you do, you should immediately raise the issue to site owner, insisting that they remove the post. If you don't get satisfaction, you can also try raising the issue to the ISP providing the server space for the site. You can locate the ISP by performing a search on the IP address at http://whois.arin.net.

Now I do have to caution you that even if the post is removed, the memory may linger. For example, it's possible that other sites will have copied the post. Archival sites, such as archive.org, do on so purpose to maintain archive "snapshots" of the internet. Search sites often retain a cached copy of pages for some time. And some blogs often generate their own content by simply slurping up the content of other blogs. You can certainly keep searching, and keep requesting that the content be removed each time you find it, but in my opinion it's a losing battle.

I often recommend contacting the authorities in a case like this. Depending on the nature of the email that you're receiving as a result, they may take it quite seriously. The problem is that depending on the specific authorities you contact - local police, FBI, others - they may simply not be technically savvy enough to deal with the situation, or they may simply not have the resources to prioritize your issue to actually get attention. But I would definitely consider this approach, if only to formally record the issue.

In the end you may have little practical recourse. Depending on the specifics of what's happening, you can either treat it like spam, and delete the objectionable email as it arrives, or you can change your email address and stop paying attention to that old address completely. Both have their drawbacks.

Related:

• Ask Leo! - How do I figure out who owns an IP address?

• Ask Leo! - How do I remove myself from the search engines?

• Ask Leo! - Why shouldn't I post my email address in a public forum?

• Taming Email - Essays on Taming the Beast that is Email

Article C2593 - March 14, 2006

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