travelnut1065

Is there a way to e-mail directly to someone who posts a message on the boards?

Flyboy

Well... No.

rex

Short answer: no, not even for those of "us" who do reveal our e-mail addresses as part of our postings. The most straightforward approach would be to post a request on that person's thread, simply requesting "Could we correspond on this subject via direct e-mails?" - - and then give your e-mail address.

Best wishes,

Rex

rex

Well, I evidently mis-spoke, at least in part. If you click on the e-mail address of those (like myself) who list them, you will launch your e-mail client with that address in the send to: field.

tml

You can just if their address is posted.

ben_haines_london

May I please encourage people to reveal their e mail address? I reveal mine perhaps five times a day, and as a result receive only a dozen pieces of junk mail a day, of which all but two are readily recognised from their headline as spam, not worth opening (exclamation marks, my name, references to medicines, dubious advice upon a part of my anatomy). And even those two often include a tale wrought with such baroque invention from a quote African civil servant unquote that I should be sorry to have missed it. The advantage of including my address is that other, nervous, readers can e mail questions to me, and I can start them off on a reply. I do, then, encourage them to move into the public domain of the forum, as that will gain them ideas of others and gain us both the views of those who think me sadly wrong ? for example I am told have been wrong for years about Brixton. What we have in open forum is peer review.

[email protected]

indytravel

It's easy to do. Go to www.hotmail.com or www.yahoo.com or someplace like that. Get a free e-mail account. Use that address here. It isn't your "real" e-mail address, but it lets people e-mail you.

Look around the free mail account too. Some of them have message forwarding. Any mail that shows up at that free account can be forwarded to your "real" e-mail account so you don't even have to sign on to your extra hotmail, etc. account to check your e-mail.

If you start getting too much spam at hotmail, etc. you can always close it out.

As an example [email protected] is one of 4 e-mail addresses I use at ATT. (Mind you I'm not using a free account here. They provide my dial-up service.) One e-mail address I use specifically at those ridiculous sites that make you provide an e-mail account to register and look around. I never bother to check that address and I don't have its e-mail forwarded. It's all just junk.

Betsy

I agree with Ben and Indy! Though some don't agree, I think that displaying one's e-mail address adds to the sense of community here. My address displayed on this board is to secondary account that I check every few days to read the legitimate messages and to delete the spam that lands there. I think we must be on the same spam list, Ben!

Ozarksbill

Yes, I often post my email address which happens to really be a yahoo one (plus my location) with the hopes that I might continue with a particular conversation or establish a friendship with someone with whom I have common interests.

Alas, some prefer not to reciprocate and so we continue on with the anonymous postings here. That is OK I guess but it does not create that sense of community that Betsy talks about...among peoples from many places sharing knowledge and advice.

As for spam, that is indeed a nuisance but not the fault of contacts on this fodors.com.

Bill in Missouri [email protected]

Marilyn

Ben, Betsy, I think we are <i>all</i> on that same spam list! I have always posted my hotmail address (which is also a secondary account for me) and am flattered when someone values my posts enough to write me directly for more information.

I have also developed a few relationships with other posters that would not have started if they had not contacted me off the forum, which they could do only because I reveal my email address.

Honestly, I do not think I get any more spam on the address I use here than on other accounts, including the one I pay for.

leslie

Whether you have one or more email addresses, and whether you have them automatically forwarding to your primary address or not, you still have to be concerned about worms and viruses that materialize on a daily basis. Although many of us have virus protection programs, there are still many viruses and worms that are not caught fast enough by these programs, and the viruses and worms can be transmitted innocently by others and infect our computers, and our address books. Besides that there are worms that blindly copy our address books and send out spam to others.

I suggest that we be cautious about sharing email addresses. Isn't there a saying about best intentions being punished?

On another note, Rex has expressed that this is a public forum and that travel information that is shared privately, is not privy to all of us.

Fodors has made many enhancements to this forum over the past year, and I for one, am very happy that each registered member has the option to keep private or expose his/her email address.

rex

Hey, Leslie, why don't you send me an e-mail sometime?

RufusTFirefly

You can't get a virus, worm, etc. by opening an email--only by opening an attachment to an email.

So if you get an email from a source you don't know and trust, just don't open any attachments and you'll be OK.

If your email service provides an option to automatically open attachments, I would NOT activate it.