Forum showing e-mail addresses?

[David]

I just noticed because I'm working on another forum that the member profiles are accessed by the site bots and thus giving away anybody who has their e-mail address in their profile (via instant messaging contact details etc.) out to potential spambots trawling the search engines.

Any reason to do this as most sites have the memberlists filtered AFAIK via robots.txt or suchlike.

[yorkie]

David it might be wise to delete your message and send a pm to James,

yorkie.

[chaz]

Have you checked to see whether there is a robots.txt in use here?

*edit* just noticed what you mean about instant messaging addresses. But if your instant messaging address is filled in, it has to be shows somehow else what's the point if no one can see it?

James

[James]

Where are you seeing e-mail addresses? Neither a users profile or anywhere else shows their e-mail address as far as I'm aware.

James

[David]

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=david%40dmb.me.uk&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

and just as another example:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=mirageuk%40msn.com&btnG=Search&meta=

If anyone has those details filled in then their address is coming up in the searches.

[James]

I agree, they will be indexed, but then that's up to the user to only publish details they would like public :)

[David]

But surely the member's list is there for members?
I have that address listed on a few forums and this is the only place that allows the member's list to be indexed. On the one that I am admin at we block them via robots.txt denying them the directory.

That's fine in the meantime though, I'll just remove it. :)