How Spammers Get Your Email Address

E-mail spammers don’t get your address because you're on the distribution list of legitimate email

publications. These days, it is a very rare mailing list that is completely open. That is not to

say that there aren’t any secure mailing lists, but it is very easy to get a hold of email addresses

these days.

So where do these spammers get your address you may be wondering? The number one place

that people used to use were posts on internet forums, and message boards. Newsgroups are

"publicly" readable; whether you post your message on your local ISP or on a major service of

some other kind, your message is typically spread worldwide by Usenet in a matter of hours,

and it; as well as your email is quickly picked up by advertisers.

The current most-common place to get your address is from actual web pages. If your e-mail

address is listed on a web page anywhere on the internet at all, such as from a contact section

especially if that page is listed in a search engine or directory, spammers will find it. To know if

this is possible all that you have to do is trying searching for your own e-mail address in Google.

If you can find it there, spammers can too. Spammers get a hold of fresh addresses by going to

web sites and scanning for e-mail addresses anywhere on the site.