The Boleslawiec.org editorial team checked three other websites associated with Bolesławiec: "Blues Nad Bobrem," "Megaportal" and "BolecInfo." It turned out that private email addresses of users could be found on them. Neither "BolecInfo" nor "Blues nad Bobrem" informs users during registration that the email address entered in the form will be available to anyone browsing the websites of these services. Only "Megaportal" warns that anyone who provides their address may receive correspondence from unknown people.
Email addresses are visible not only to other Internet users, but also to automated programs scouring the web for potential recipients of spam, or unsolicited correspondence. As a result, users of an unsecured service may be exposed to receiving even dozens of advertising emails a day. To confirm this, we sent a brief message about Boleslawiec.org to the addresses collected from the portals. The recipients’ reactions indicate that the messages did indeed reach them.
None of the services informs users that its data set has been reported for registration to the General Inspector for Personal Data Protection, even though each of them is subject to such an obligation. The administrators of the "Blues nad Bobrem" and "BolecInfo" websites rely on a simple legal formula, believing that it releases them from responsibility for making the addresses available.
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The illustrations show the services mentioned above. To find out someone’s email address, it is enough to visit publicly accessible forums and point to the user’s name with the mouse. The email address will appear in the status bar at the bottom of the page.