Answer:
Answer by Jim Bedsole:
Could be any number of ways. If he has registered at any internet sites or discussion forums using his home e-mail address without carefully checking the site's privacy policies, he may have given out his message to a website that accumulates and sells lists of e-mail addresses. Also, if he has posted in any newsgroups, they are notorious for collection by spam mailers and such. Even if he has not given out his address to anyone except individuals with whom he has had direct correspondence, one of them may have forwarded one of his messages with his address to some type of newsgroup or forum where it could have been picked up.
Answer:
Answer by Barry Thompson:
Jim is correct with his answer and there are additional ways to obtain e-mail addresses. Have you ever sent a joke to someone and had it forwarded on to other people? I have a friend who is in theater and people alerted me to the fact that they searched this persons e-mail line to see if anyone famous had forwarded the joke to my friend.
Needless to say I stopped forwarding her jokes. You can also use a search engine and request e-mail addresses. You will find many sites that will allow you to wildcard on just a few letters obtaining e-mail addresses.
Answer:
Answer by Andy Zavoina:
And still another way is to have a "spider" crawl through Web sites just like newsgroups, and have it extract all the e-mail addresses it can find.
As to spam in general, I rarely respond to the line that says, "to remove yourself from this list, do..." Often, if thereply-to address is even valid, it simply records that your address is verified and active. Your address then getsadded to a list of a few million others that sells for a higher price to the next spammer.
First published on BankersOnline.com 7/2/01
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