I wanted to address this issue publicly, as we tend to go through this every few months.
First, what you have to understand is that these forums are public. Any and everything that you post here show’s up for any and everyone (regardless of membership) to read.
Second, if you’re a member of other groups/forums where you use your email address to correspond (like the biglist and Yahoo groups) then its very easy for your email address to be known, especially if you’ve shared your Adoption.com user name in those places.
Its important to remember that posting anything personal to the Internet is a risk. You might be careful about what you post, but if you post it to many different places and you use the same user name – it’s not really hard to piece together the puzzle.
I posted a post last year that might be of interest to some of you:
Internet Safety for Adults
I wish there were more we could do…but the fact is, the forums aren’t a private group and anyone on the Internet, member or not, can read any and everything posted here. All we can do at this point is remind folks that sharing information is a risk. It’s not just sharing here that is a problem…but sharing anywhere.