The reason I ask is because an agency recently contacted me about a review I had written. I never told them my username and they told me they used my e-mail address to find my TER username. This makes me a little nervous because that means my significant other could plug in my e-mail address.

I'm betting they just guessed your username based on the review you wrote.

but this shows the importance of setting up a seperate email account to use for this business.

Never use your usual email address for hobbying at all.   It is not a good idea.

Setup an email using hotmail, yahoo, or gmail.

They are much less linkable to you, and if someone sends an email to you, nobody will see it unless you open that email account.

Get on the reviews section. Select 'search whitelist'. Enter the email address TER has in your profile. It will come back with your TER handle.

It is unlikely your SO would stumble on to that feature though.

that's how an awful lot of guys get CAUGHT!

my advice:

if you've been using a shared computer to hobby, at the very least remove all history, links, cookies and forms related to the hobby

buy a usb thumb drive, preferably hardware encrypted / password protected

install Opera on the drive

use the thumb drive based opera browser for all of your hobbying, and set up a gmail or other web based account for hobby email, using your TER username.

When *you* are not using the computer to hobby, remove the thumb drive and put it aside somewhere discreet.....

The Safari browser from Apple also has an option I haven't seen on other browsers (Steve Jobs must hobby) it is called Private Browsing and doesn't record tracks.