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We offer a free and simple
email finder
system for anyone who changes their email address past,
present or future.
We let people know you've
moved, but only if you tell us to - we have some
unique anti-spam features!
Once you've set up your
account here in the ContactClean email address directory
you'll be able to register all your old
email addresses and the address you use now.
Over time individuals you've lost contact with
will come to our site and search for your old address
and, depending on your preferences, we'll tell
them your current preferred address. In your User Preferences
you'll be able to say whether you want to pass
on your new preferred address by default. If not, then
the searcher will be asked to register themselves and
you'll be sent an email to let you know.
And if you change your email again in the future just
let us know and we'll pass that on as well.
If you haven't registered yet then do so on the
registration page.
If you change your email address ContactClean cannot yet forward
your emails, this is something only your old email provider
can do.
If your old email is being shut down then when someone
sends a message to you that bounces they will have to
come to ContactClean and look you up to find your new
address.
If your old email provider doesn't support email forwarding
then see if you can set a "vacation message"
or "auto reply" of some kind. To avoid spammers
tracking your new address it's best not to put your
new address into this auto-reply. But you can use a
ContactClean Quick Search link like this
http://www.ContactClean.com/demo_old_address@example.com
(use your own old address after the / )
Use our free email search
tool - just enter their old address here and hit search
“I've
changed my address because I was getting too much junk
at the old one. I don't want the junk to follow
me!”
At ContactClean.com we understand your problem (really,
we do!!!) - so our database, and the results of the
Lookup Page, will never be available to all and sundry.
Spammers gather their email lists by using automated
programs (spiders) to crawl around the web to suck up
email addresses like a vacuum cleaner. Our Lookup Page
has been crafted to be invisible to 99.9% of junk-mail
spiders, and the other 0.1% would have to put in so
much effort to exploit the page it wouldn't be
cost-effective for them.
And if that isn't enough there's a setting
on your User Page (once you register) that allows you
to vet all lookups of your old addresses - i.e. the
searcher has to register, and confirm their address,
and then you get to choose whether or not to say hello.
See also our privacy statement.
We're trying to support users
of ISPs, and other email providers, who have closed
down (e.g. Excite, Vizzavi etc.). Obviously such users
can't confirm their email address, and therefore
opt in, because their email doesn't work any more!
See the next question for more details...
When a user enters an address, an
email is sent to that address containing a coded form
of the address and a random number. Whoever receives
the address is presented with two links to choose from:
one will confirm that the reader is the true owner of
the address and wants it added to the ContactClean.com
system, the other will prevent the addition (i.e. the
reader of the message is obviously the true owner of
the address, but someone else has tried to add that
address to the system either maliciously or in error).
This system works fine when the address is still in
use. But consider the situation where an address is
so old it's no longer accessible, or the ISP in
question has stopped trading - this happens frequently
enough to be worth thinking about. To help our users
rediscover old contacts who may only have these very
old addresses in their address book ContactClean.com keeps
the requested address in a database. If there is no
response to the confirmation message, either an accept
or a decline, within three months then ContactClean.com
will presume it's one of these very old, defunct,
addresses and will activate it within the lookup system.
The confirmation message will be sent out once every
month within these three months.
The limit of three months has been picked as a compromise:
any shorter and it may be possible to register the address
of someone who is on holiday, any longer and it will
feel like an eternity before your old address becomes
activated.
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