Getting lots of spam all of the sudden? It could be your email address on display...

Have you wondered where the sudden influx of spam or junk email has been coming from? What has caused such a break in the levee that you thought was so secure for the longest time? Most of us immediately think of our email providers (e.g. Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail, etc.) and their "apparent" inability to update their filters. Well, the true answer might be where you've been typing in your email address and other related contact information.

Let's take a quick shot and see what's out there. Head to your favorite internet search engine (e.g. Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc.) and go ahead and type in what's called the "local-part" of your email address(es). That refers to the beginning stuff before the "@" symbol. So go ahead and enter your "jimmyriff24" or "bharrison120" and hit the search button. Where does it take you?

If you're unlucky enough to have some results, you might be looking at a list of websites that list your email address or screenname publicly. Not good. In fact, there are programs out there just hunting the internet for email addresses just to send you their wonderful attempts to spam you with junk.

Do this with all of the local-parts of your email addresses and even do it with your social networking or chatting screennames with an added word or phrase specifying what you use it for (for example, for AOL Instant Messenger users, search for "jimmyriff24 AIM"). Results indicate public occurrences that you don't want.

So, seeing that might be scary, but how did it get there in the first place? Well, some websites can sell that information to others, whom may post that information publicly so their partners can see the list as well. Sometimes, you may be registering for a website or social network and one of the settings is for you to display your email address or chat screenname.

Searching for this information is the easy part. The harder part comes in getting your addresses and screennames off of the internet. You will have to check out each of the website results and investigate. Some websites, you will have to look to see if there is a setting to remove your publicly displayed email address or screenname and switch it off (Facebook does this). With some websites, you may have to remove your contact information all together. With others, you will see your email address listed with others and wonder "how the hell did it get there???" For those, you may have to contact the website via one of their links at the bottom of the page and request that it be removed.

Either way, the lesson is to keep track of where your information is and how it's visible. It may seem controlled and private but with searching a screenname with "AIM" right behind it (let's say for "jimmyriff24 AIM") can show people that jimmyriff24@aol.com is a valid email address. So is jimmyriff24@aim.com. It also hints that perhaps other email accounts might have the same local-part, perhaps jimmyriff24@yahoo.com or jimmyriff24@gmail.com because so many people use similar screennames and local-parts.

Getting your name off the results page can be rewarding because you can eventually see your success in the future. Remember, that it takes a while before the pages come down, as you basically have to wait for your favorite search engine to revisit the same page and index the results WITHOUT your email address this time.