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From: Davidson on 19 Jun 2010 09:55
I was submitting a query on the website www.howtomendit.com but before
I got to the stage of clicking ‘send’ a panel appeared which displayed
my IP address AND my email address. As I had not entered the latter
anywhere on the site - and had never visited the site before - I was
(as a relative novice) somewhat taken aback by this. Was I right to
be? Any advice gratefully received.

Mac mini 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo OS 10.6.4
From: Andy Hewitt on 19 Jun 2010 10:51
Davidson <geodav45(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> I was submitting a query on the website www.howtomendit.com but before
> I got to the stage of clicking 'send' a panel appeared which displayed
> my IP address AND my email address. As I had not entered the latter
> anywhere on the site - and had never visited the site before - I was
> (as a relative novice) somewhat taken aback by this. Was I right to
> be? Any advice gratefully received.
>
> Mac mini 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo OS 10.6.4

Have you got the autofill feature of Safari turned on? If so, it'll
probably have put your email address in there for you as it detected the
form appearing.

--
Andy Hewitt
<http://web.me.com/andrewhewitt1/>
From: Davidson on 19 Jun 2010 11:28
On 19 June, 15:51, thewildro...(a)me.com (Andy Hewitt) wrote:
> Davidson <geoda...(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > I was submitting a query on the websitewww.howtomendit.combut before
> > I got to the stage of clicking 'send' a panel appeared which displayed
> > my IP address AND my email address. As I had not entered the latter
> > anywhere on the site - and had never visited the site before -  I was
> > (as a relative novice) somewhat taken aback by this. Was I right to
> > be? Any advice gratefully received.
>
> > Mac mini 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo  OS 10.6.4
>
> Have you got the autofill feature of Safari turned on? If so, it'll
> probably have put your email address in there for you as it detected the
> form appearing.
>
> --
> Andy Hewitt
> <http://web.me.com/andrewhewitt1/>

Yes, I did recently turn this on - and have now switched it off. Have
tried the site again and the curious thing is that the panel
identifying my IP and email addresses appears before I have entered
any personal information or have seen any such information entered
through autofill. Nonetheless, many thanks for your advice.
From: Andy Hewitt on 19 Jun 2010 11:38
Davidson <geodav45(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> On 19 June, 15:51, thewildro...(a)me.com (Andy Hewitt) wrote:
> > Davidson <geoda...(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > > I was submitting a query on the websitewww.howtomendit.combut before
> > > I got to the stage of clicking 'send' a panel appeared which displayed
> > > my IP address AND my email address. As I had not entered the latter
> > > anywhere on the site - and had never visited the site before - I was
> > > (as a relative novice) somewhat taken aback by this. Was I right to
> > > be? Any advice gratefully received.
> >
> > > Mac mini 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo OS 10.6.4
> >
> > Have you got the autofill feature of Safari turned on? If so, it'll
> > probably have put your email address in there for you as it detected the
> > form appearing.
> >
> > --
> > Andy Hewitt
> > <http://web.me.com/andrewhewitt1/>
>
> Yes, I did recently turn this on - and have now switched it off. Have
> tried the site again and the curious thing is that the panel
> identifying my IP and email addresses appears before I have entered
> any personal information or have seen any such information entered
> through autofill. Nonetheless, many thanks for your advice.

Now it'll be cached. Try clearing the caches (Safari menu item, 'Empty
cache..').

--
Andy Hewitt
<http://web.me.com/andrewhewitt1/>
From: Rowland McDonnell on 19 Jun 2010 14:23
Davidson <geodav45(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> I was submitting a query on the website www.howtomendit.com but before
> I got to the stage of clicking 'send' a panel appeared which displayed
> my IP address AND my email address. As I had not entered the latter
> anywhere on the site - and had never visited the site before - I was
> (as a relative novice) somewhat taken aback by this. Was I right to
> be? Any advice gratefully received.

Andy Hewitt seems to have a clue about what you're dealing with
directly.

A sideways thought: Firefox <http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/>
has a lot of additions available for it that address security issues.

As I understand it, the biggest risks are related to Javascript and
requests to `other sites'. Firefox has plug-ins to deal with them - I
use NoScript and RequestPolicy to deal with them (can be a pain if you
read blogs, most of which seem to refer to gazillions of other pages for
information; if the site looks safe enough, I'll often say `sod it' and
allow the lot temporarily).

There are other security issues and means of dealing with them. I don't
pretend to have much understanding of them myself - I can't offer any
better advice than to do your own research on the Web, and ask questions
here and there once you know enough to ask /intelligent/ questions
(which is more than I do in most cases).

FlashBlock stops Flash elements playing until you click on them, which I
find very handy.

AdBlock Plus, erm, does a good job of blocking adverts (pick yer own
subscription, which will make sense if you look at AdBlock Plus).

(others I like: Flagfox (tells you where the Webpage comes from),
Globefish (translation), Session Manager (saves and restores tabs and
windows), and Downloadhelper (grab video from YouTube and others)).

Rowland.

--
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