[Rant] Spreading Personal Information -- a primer

Would you take out an ad in the paper and publish your friends' home phone numbers?

Would you stick one of those magnetic signs on your car as you drive about with your friends' and relatives' names and addresses on them in large, readable letters?

Would you send copies of postal letters to everyone you know that list the home addresses of each and every one of them, irrespective of whether they knew one another -- and send a copy to a national newspaper for printing?

If not, then why not?

Finally, are you one of those who sends mass e-mails to everyone you know, putting the e-mail addresses in the "To" line for all to see?

Irrespective of your answers to the questions at the top, if you answered "Yes" to that last question, then do me and everyone you know a favor and cancel your Internet service immediately.

If you answered "pffft, duh, no, I mean, hello?" then you are excused and may go off in search of the perfect cupcake or wotever you find more interesting.

Everyone else, take notes; there will be a quiz later.

It's not information that can readily be used for identification theft, and it's not likely to give real life stalkers added fodder for finding you, but a person's e-mail address is personal information. It is information your friends and relatives have chosen to share with you to make it easier for you to communicate with them.

What it is not is information you have the right to share with others.

Why is this important?

Number 1: Your second bestest friend in the world will probably forward your e-mail to his third cousin's fourth wife's late child's dog's veterinarian who, as it turns out, was involved in a bitter lawsuit with one of the people in your address book and now has a way to harass his nemesis. Or something along those lines.

Number 2: spammers. They get e-mail addies from spyware planted on the computers of about half of your correspondence list. The rest they get by siphoning out of the zombie routers that might've helped send that joke along its way.

Number 3: It's fucking rude, 'k? It's pretty much exactly like sending the postal letter full of names and addresses to the newspapers and to everyone you know, or sharing the phone numbers with the world.

So what should you do?

Simple. Put the addresses in a "bcc" list. Put your own e-mail address into the "To" line.
Less simple: sign up for one of the many social networking sites or "communities" or e-mail lists and invite all your friends. Then use that site to communicate those mass jokes you just have to share.
Even less simple and not for the faint of heart: get an e-mail client that'll let you set up messages that go to a list of people individually. You supply the list to the software, it takes care of sending multiple messages one at a time to each of the people in your list. Ritlabs "The Bat!" lets you do that. Take care you don't trigger your ISP's spam laws, though.

I'm ranting about this because my personal e-mail address has again been compromised to the point of becoming nearly useless. Anti-spam 'ware is only somewhat helpful and often shitcans perfectly legit messages which is a pain in the arse. I now get to go to some lengths to scrub my mail so I can get the good stuff and never have to see the shit that has been added because friends and relatives thought it was just peachy to send my personal address to people I've never heard of before.

'k. Done now.