There are quite a few ways spammers get your e-mail address. These are some of the most common.

Site Harvesting
There are software programs that go from web site to web site scanning for any e-mail addresses. If you put an e-mail address up on a web site, sooner or later you’re going to be spammed. Avoid putting e-mail addresses on any web site. If you must, try to mask it by typing it out at yourname at domaindotcom. This will help ward off robots that look for the standard yourname@domain.net address format, but can still be figured out by humans.

Commercial Lists
You’ve probably gotten spam offering to sell you a CD of millions of e-mail addresses at some point or another. These companies usually claim that everyone they have on these lists have agreed to be on them, but most likely they just used a software program to harvest the web using the method above.

Discussion Forums, Blog Comments
Posting your e-mail address on a comment form or discussion board will again just about guarantee you’ll end up on a list and getting spammed. Avoid using your real e-mail address whenever possible. The most common way to help prevent spam is to get an e-mail address from one of the big e-mail providers (that have good spam filters) and use that e-mail address for posting on the web.

E-Mail Forwards
You’ve gotten them from friends, co-workers, etc. A joke, a piece of news. It could be anything. If they’re not placing the list of e-mail addresses these are being sent to in the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) field, every e-mail address is exposed to anyone who gets that forward. The best thing about it, they know that they’re good addresses. If you forward e-mails to lots of people, use that BCC field.

Do you want to protect your real e-mail address from junk mail and viruses? There are two popular options.

1. Create a throwaway e-mail address at one of the many free web-based e-mail providers. Use this address when you need to sign up for newsletters and things at web sites you don’t fully trust. When it begins to get too cluttered, just delete the account and create a new one. Right now the best service for this is probably Yahoo! Mail. They have built-in spam filters that will move most of the junk to it’s own folder.

2. Get a disposable e-mail address. There are many services on the web now which let you get a temporary e-mail box to use on online forms. You can then check the e-mail address and get the confirmation or whatever you need before it expires.

In my opinion, the best is Jetable. This site lets you enter your real e-mail address (or your throwaway one if you’re really paranoid) and select how long you want a temporary address to be active. Your choices are One Hour, One Day, One Week and One Month. After hitting submit, you will get an alias e-mail to use where you want. Anything sent there will be forwarded to your real address for the duration you selected before it dies.

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