1) Your private email address isn't as private as you thought.

2) How are you to get rid of the email from your ISP's email server.

3) If you were to read it, how do you do that without leaving a trace on the computer you use to read it.

4) How to keep safe against viruses and other malware in email generally. Re 1) Get a new email address. The old one is compromised and you'll never get it out of your ex-client's head. You will need to keep your new personal address to a much closer group of people than you have in the past. The ex got it from someone you've given it to at some point in the past, or from someone they have given it to. Once you release it to someone, you can't control who they reveal it to. Make sure you never post your personal email address anywhere, ever.

I have a scheme that I use personally to mitigate this problem -- and it is a problem -- that avoids the need to keep changing your own email address but it would take a while to describe so I'm not going to do it in this post.

Re 2) You won't be able to remove it from the ISP logfile but you might be able to remove it from your inbox on the server without having to read the body. Call them, or email your ISP's abuse email address, and let them know which email address your ex-client is using to send email to you (if you can tell without downloading it). Ask them to add a filter to their email server. They may or may not do this. You could also ask them to delete the email from your inbox. Be prepared to explain your situation and concern.

NB: this doesn't change the fact that your email address is compromised, it only deals with this particular email. The problem could recur if the ex emails you again from another email address.

Re 3) You've already partly read the message, at least you must have read the subject line and sender's name in your inbox or you wouldn't have written to the forum here. Your email software may have downloaded the rest of the message to your local computer already unless you are using a web-based service. If that's the case, like Sebastian, I'd just delete it without reading it. There will still be a trace of it on your own hard disk should a forensic scan be done -- but you can then correctly claim that you deleted it unread.

Re 4). Switch to linux if you can otherwise, on Windows, get a good virus scanner and keep it up to date. Make sure it is correctly configured (get help if you need some) so it scans incoming and outgoing email. Use an email reader that can be configured to show all your email in plain text and, at the very least, turn off images in your email. Most problems come from either HTML email with images or from email attachments. Avoid opening any attachment that comes in unsolicited email -- open only what you are expecting to come in.

If you are running on windows, get and install SandboxIE (a software sandbox) and run your web browser and email apps from inside that.

(A slightly off topic note to Sebastian that may be interesting to others.) Nice idea but I suspect that will be insufficient to prevent email recovery from the machine if the hard disk is seized and put through a good forensic investigation.

I know a missionary agency out in the far east that destroys its hard disks by opening them, taking the (extremely powerful) magnets out of the voice coils (the bit that moves the heads over the surface of the drive), then they proceed to wipe the entire surface (top and bottom) of every platter in the drive with those magnets.

I'm not sure what they do after that but I assume they would then break every one of the platters and dispose of them in multiple locations.

To do this yourself you'd need a fine torx screwdriver set -- one with the security dimple in the centre of the bits. Afterward, you'd also have yourself a **very** powerful set of magnets for other purposes such as spare 'keys' for JJL's magnetic locks.

Submitted Link #1: http://www.sandboxie.com/...

The simple fact is that the government cannot compel you to say or do anything that might incriminate you. They can't compel you to speak AT ALL, EVER, and they can't compel you to perform some action based on guilty knowledge that would produce incriminating evidence.

What this judge is ruling is equivalent to saying that if a drug smuggler has a locked safe in his trunk that the police can compel him to open it merely because a drug dog has detected the scent. They cannot, and the defendant can refuse to assist them. It then becomes the government's problem to break into the safe to obtain the evidence if they have a warrant.

Encrypted computer files are the same sort of thing. Only your testimony, in the form of giving them the password, either verbally or by typing it, would reveal incriminating evidence, and they cannot compel you to tell them where, or what, or how to find the evidence they want to use to convict you is. That's their problem.

In this case, they appear to be wanting to search the hard drive to find more evidence, probably including email links to other pedophiles, but since that information can be used to stack charges, unless they offer him immunity from prosecution for anything and everything that might be on the hard drive, he doesn't have to help them.

The important consideration here is what is the penalty for refusing to cooperate versus what the penalty is if some incriminating evidence is found. For most people, it's not a matter of criminal behavior, it's a desire for privacy, so it wouldn't be worth spending time in jail on contempt charges, but for child pornography, the added sentence could be substantial, so it's probably worth it to withhold the password.

They accept cash by mail in payment for your order.

Submitted Link #1: http://www.difrwear.com/purchase.shtml...

The problem is that a person walking through the crowd (as referenced in the article linked in the earlier post by somebody else) could ALSO pick up the RFID chip in the newer passports. That leaves almost everybody who carries a passport instead of a driver's license for ID vulnerable as well. Even those of y'all whose passports were issued prior to RFID chips will eventually have to replace them....

At what point will it cause even more questions to be one of the people in the crowd whose passport or driver's license doesn't "beep" while the security guy is walking through the crowd? Not that I'm paranoid.... LOL!

... There is seldom any reason to carry a passport. Since you always pay cash, it may be needed only when you wish to cash a check or travel by air and/or stay in a hotel or motel.

For those of you even more paranoid than your humble servant, wrap your passport in tin foil.

If you have a nominee open a bank account for you, and that nominee later dies (as I'm told we all eventually will,) won't that account be frozen as soon as the bank finds out? Then your money will be part of your nominee's estate, unless the nominee is not a U.S. citizen.

Is the answer to electronically transfer funds to that account only as needed, so no excess cash is there on that mournful day?

... Don't keep too much cash in the nominee's account if you are worried about his or her health. Normally you would cash a check for close to the balance, once you heard of a serious accident or illness. Otherwise, don't keep any more in the account than you can afford to lose. (I suggest keeping the balance under $10,000.)