If u send someone an email ..can they use the address to hack into ur account

[chinadoll]

I was recently told by my landlord that all communication was to be in email format ..no texts r phone.... He wasnt interested in me giving him my email written on a piece of paper there and then by he insisted that I send an email to his account ....thought this was very unusual...but went along with it..... is there any way that he could hack into my email account or even send a key logger spy ware soft ware onto my machine....... am using hotmail by the way

[MVP]

He's less likely to try the hacking route in order to install a key-logger (if this is his intention), but more likely to wait until you are out then pop in and sit down in front of your PC...if he's PC savvy, basic Windows passwords are easy to workaround. Or perhaps he saw BBC 3's "The Hustle" where the team inserted a BlueTooth device into a keyboard!

I would find out why he believes that the letting business should be paperless - perhaps he believes there's less traceability? Perhaps he thinks it's easier to loose things? Strange.

[BreenM]

I doubt there's anything sinister in it at all.

Quite the opposite MVP. It's far easier to keep records by e-mail. No postage costs for letters etc too. How do you file texts and phone calls easily anyway??

Besides in reality he wouldn't really be able to do much anyway with just an e-mail address unless you opened a suspect attachment.

Sounds to me like he's just trying to be more efficient.

[rojash]

I always ask people to send me an e-mail if I want their address. That way I can just "add sender to address book" and know that it's the correct address. Similarly, here in Greece, if two people want to exchange phone numbers, person A will tell B the phone number, then B will text them to ensure it's correct. At that point A can just add the phone number from the caller ID. Easy life - no mistakes - nothing sinister at all!

[koster]

Chinadoll, I think you're being paranoid.

It's easy to loose a peace of paper with an email address written on it.

On the other hand, if you use an ISP with a decent inbox size then there's no need to ever delete an email.

Most phones, on the other hand, have a very limited amount of storage space for text messages.

[jake-the-peg]

The only thing that you really need to keep in mind about e-mail is that it's generally not secure in any real manner.

Good rule of thumb is never to write anything in a normal e-mail that you'd not be happy putting on a post card

[Hammer Head]

Koster, that should be 'lose a piece of paper'.

[camioneur]

maybe koster means he's going to set a piece a paper free

[MVP]

BreenM - I totally agree, it is much more efficient. A long time ago, I had a dodgy landlord who would have loved to have "lost" everything...kind of like "my computer crashed destroying everything"...it's more of an effort to destroy an paper-based filing system if the authorities come looking!

I'm sure this landlord is perfectly above board though!