Is Your Email Address Public Data?

quackking writes "Are email addresses public records, accessible under public open-access laws in America? Up in Maine they are fighting about just this issue ..."

Comments

Sure.

[Unknown Poltroon]

AS long as i can get an unlisted one.

To put it in perspective

[dacarr]

Your email address is public much as your snail address is public. It is a means to deliver something to a specific location.

And it is as public as you, the holder of said address, make it. If you want people to contact you, you stick it in a website. If you don't want people contacting you, you don't use it anywhere, just keep it out of the public eye.

Re:To put it in perspective

[Samrobb]

Your email address is public much as your snail address is public.

I think it's more like your phone number. Your physical address is a matter of public record because it's a matter of public interest - there are numerous government agencies (postal service, law enforcement, fire stations, EMT) that need to know your phycial address in order to function properly.

It isn't nearly as important that your phone number be a matter of public record, and so it is possible to request an unlisted phone number. Likewise, I think you should be able to have a reasonable expecation of privacy for your email address, and the government should honor this expectation by assuming that you do not want your address / phone number / fax number / pager number / cell phone number / email address / other personal information distributed unless you've given them explicit permission to do so.

Email is both Public & Private Data

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact of the matter is that email is both public and private data. The town doesn't seem to be arguing against having email messages to public office be private, they clearly state that those emails are consider public record. The situation is clearly different from that, it's like someone going to the DMV and requesting a list of addresses and phone numbers from everyone who registered their car within the last year. Sure the information is a matter of public record to some degree. If I wanted to, I could find out the name and phone number for everyone in my neighborhood, and do so legally, but that's very different from me going up to my neighborhood association leader and asking for a printed or electronic copy of all their names and addresses because I "want to communicate with them." The difference is how much work you have to do, and what makes a reasonable request or a reasonable accommodation. If the requestor was willing to go through every email message sent to a public official and copy down the email addresses, that's perfectly legal and reasonable. To ask that a public employee does it for him than hands him the data is not. A mailing list is consolidated data, data that has been compiled for a specific purpose. If the forms the email addresses were collected from aren't considered public data, then the email addresses themselves shouldn't be either. Of course this also means the opposite, that if the forms are public record, then so are the email addresses provided. But even with that measure being true, someone wanting to collect just the email addresses from thos forms, should be forced to go into the site where the forms are stored, and go through box after box of the forms to collect the data they want.

No - in a way.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't just make up a new phone number. You can't just make up a new address.

You can do that with e-mail addresses. Be it making a new hotspam, err, hotmail address, or be it through owning your own domain name and thus having a virtually unlimited amount of addresses at your disposal.

Now, here's where it gets tricky. If you post your e-mail address to a public forum, it's no longer private. If you send it to some company that requires it and thus, you end up getting spammed, tough luck.

E-mail addresses are inherently private - the fact that people give them out far too easily isn't the fault of e-mail, and it doesn't need any legislation keeping/preventing addresses from being 'public'.

In short, if you want to keep your e-mail address private, no one's going to stop you.

(Just be sure that your 'friends' take you seriously when you point out that they will receive .50 cal pieces of lead in various parts of their bodies if they cause your address to receive spam.)

Re:No - in a way.

[walker2030]

Well you can get your phone number changed and unlisted. I think that phone numbers, address, e-mail address should be handled the same way

Unreasonable effort

[bluGill]

Sure, if I go through unreasonabl effort I have a chance of keeping my email address spam free. I need to find someone willing to accept my private domain, as DNS records are public. It can be their domain, but they have to allow me to set up as many email addresses as I want, and not tell anyone what they are. Then I need to be careful who gets that address.

Problem is I can't be careful who gets my email address. I'm looking for a job, and MOST potential employeers email me first when they are interested. If I don't respond they are likely to move on, in this ecconomy they can afford to accept someone else. (Note, see the other /. story about ID theft from job listings for the other side of this)

For that matter I want my email public and some strangers to email me. I don't know who they are, but there might be someone with information I need, or who needs information I have, and email is the best way to communicate. If I need the information I can't expect them to go through extra effort to reach me, if email bounces they won't try again. If they need my information they will try harder, but if my email address isn't public then they will have to give up.