How Do You Handle Strange Reader Emails?

Well...

If you've ever posted your personal email anywhere on the Internet (here, for example), a search engine will bring it up. But even if you haven't, I imagine that a person with access to one of the many pay-per-search services could get ahold of it. I don't know, of course, because I'm not a journalist, but if the company for which this person works maintains a subscription to such a service, it could be as easy as a few mouse clicks to get the data.

I might also be tempted to question the identity of the person sending the email. For someone who has a little computer expertise, it's quite possible to mask emails -- make them appear to come from someplace, or someone, other than the sender.

I think the email would disturb me, too, partly because it doesn't sound typical of a professional and respected journalist. There are, after all, polite forms of expressing concern, and it would have been appropriate to send an email to your workplace stating that the author was concerned that medical treatment for stress might be neglected if spiritual treatment were favored. Instead, you have a person who is evading boundaries on several fronts, and (if the original phraseology used was as crude as the summary) displaying a serious lack of professionalism.

Like you, I would not answer the e-mail, but I would not delete it, either, and if there is any further contact from this person, I would start printing copies of anything received for the sake of keeping records. This may have been a simple act of poor judgment on the part of someone with easy access to information; it may have been the response of someone who wasn't particularly sober at the moment of pressing the Send button. It's very unlikely that you will hear anything further or need to take any other actions, but if you ever need a record, it's good to have one.

So sorry this popped up in your day....

It's still very easy to get personal data via the 'net. It's much harder to keep private than most people realize.

That said, I'm with L.C. -- don't delete the email, save it in a special folder, just in case, so you can find it easily.

However, to play devil's advocate for a moment -- there's always the possibility that the emailer just wanted to send you a note and that's the email they got when they Googled or whatever. Since Tom Cruise spoke up about his beliefs, I think more people feel they either have the right or the obligation to shout to others either to do or not do medications for mental illness, stress, etc. It could just be that -- this person is firmly on the side of 'take the drugs' and feels you're not, and is, in their way, witnessing for the pharmaceuticals.

Oh Brookie that's just creepy! I hope you never hear from this guy again.

Yikes! Definitely keep a copy of the email, just in case.

I'm a web developer by day, and know first hand what all can be found online. Because of that, I'm paranoid about privacy. I'm not "out" on the internet as myself anywhere. When I become a published author, I plan on using a pen name for everything. There's too many creeps and weirdos out there. I don't want someone finding me or my family.

Did you allude to suicide in your article? Because that's the weird part about the note--you're talking about stress and they're talking about suicide.

You are not alone. Save the email in case it's needed later. Do not respond. And try not to worry about it.

Keyboard

I think there are many possible interpretations of any piece of writing, and this fellow's is clearly different from yours. I don't see anything ominous or sinister or worrisome. I've gotten plenty of strange responses to my own book . . . I'd just let it go.

L.C. Blackwell said:

Well...

If you've ever posted your personal email anywhere on the Internet (here, for example), a search engine will bring it up. But even if you haven't, I imagine that a person with access to one of the many pay-per-search services could get ahold of it. I don't know, of course, because I'm not a journalist, but if the company for which this person works maintains a subscription to such a service, it could be as easy as a few mouse clicks to get the data.

Click to expand...

I agree, it can be virtually impossible to determine how someone got some info about you. It's also good to remove anything that you may have concern about (the OP mentioned location), but keep in mind that removing something from a webpage does NOT totally remove it from the Internet, it just makes it harder to get to. Most anything posted on a webpage gets saved and archived somewhere, and it's often made available from somewhere else for a very long time.

L.C. Blackwell said:

I might also be tempted to question the identity of the person sending the email. For someone who has a little computer expertise, it's quite possible to mask emails -- make them appear to come from someplace, or someone, other than the sender.

Click to expand...

Now that's a point that could explain both the unprofessional-sounding nature of the letter AND that it went to her personal email. It could have actually been a relative/friend/aquaintance who wrote the email (thus, they already know OP's personal email address, but didn't think about that not being the "right" address to send such an email to for commenting on a published article), pretending to be this "respected journalist."

L.C. Blackwell said:

Like you, I would not answer the e-mail, but I would not delete it, either, and if there is any further contact from this person, I would start printing copies of anything received for the sake of keeping records. This may have been a simple act of poor judgment on the part of someone with easy access to information; it may have been the response of someone who wasn't particularly sober at the moment of pressing the Send button. It's very unlikely that you will hear anything further or need to take any other actions, but if you ever need a record, it's good to have one.

So sorry this popped up in your day....

Click to expand...

I agree about saving and printing - Id also print it with "full headers" so the real source of the email can be determined. Headers can be forged as well, but it's not as easy as forging someone else's email address in the From: field, and my guess is this person wouldn't even think of that. In Thunderbird (which appears to be something like Outlook/Outlook Express) you can select the email and do View->Message Source, and it shows all the headers as well as the email body, and THAT is what you should print out. The headers have an IP address (well, they have several, but one is the originating point) that when decoded usually tells the ISP and city, or organization (such as a university) the email came from. If that doesn't jibe with the area where this reporter lives, and/or it DOES jibe with where some aquaintance of the OP lives, then, well, things get interesting...

This person was probably just trying to mock you in a very mean spirited way. If you're worried, then get a new email address. They probably aren't who they say they are, or the name is a coincidence.