Can anything be done about this?

Claudio González wrote: As I understand things, once such data has been posted in a public forum such as this, the damage is already done and cannot be corrected simply by deleting the data from the post.

Damage?  You talk as though allowing the world to see one's eMail address is akin to asking for trouble.

What do people do with such personal information in your neck of the woods that's so awful?

-Noel

I have never  even considered clicking the Report button when it was called Report Abuse. Looking now I can see that the word Abuse only comes up when the next window is opened.

Still, it should be termed differently, not just Report Abuse, maybe Abuse or other issues.

As it is, reporting Private Information is most likely interpreted as something malicious, like spam, rather than lack of caution.

We have a category on the Report page for 'Private information' to deal with this type of thing. Rather than juggle about with indirect replies, just report the message and one of the moderation team will edit it ASAP.

Claudio, Terri,

And the obvious damage control (or at least limitation) at the root, namely to make the poster aware of the issue without replying to the post in question and thereby making it impossible for anyone but moderators to change anything, is often impossible.

Most unfortunate.

This reminds me of a statement I saw some years ago about spam mails: the only way to avoid spam mails is to shoot everyone that replies to them.

Nothing automatic, no.

And your guess about the cause of this rise may be correct. Impossible to say.