A Terrible Unscientific Study - Why Do Some Addresses Get Spam and Others Don't?

I'm the owner of two primary email accounts.

One is fairly old (9 years), but hasn't been posted online very much.

One is much newer (2 years), but is displayed on a high-profile spam email blocker software website which is regularly crawled by the engines.

The first account gets tons of e-mail spam, the second gets only a little.

Some speculation on why this might be:

I registered a number of domains under the first account. "Back in the day" Network Solutions registration database was basically a big list of validated addresses for spammers to harvest from.

A lot of the spam I get is from places that claim I opted-in. The problem is that it's hard for me to dispute this. Maybe 7 years ago I signed up my old account for an e-card service, and didn't read the fine print.

I never wouldn't done anything so stupid with my newer account.

It also may just take a number of years to wind up on the majority of spam lists. If this is true - eventually my newer account should get a bunch more spam.

In the meantime - I'll tentatively conclude that having your e-mail address posted online doesn't necessarily always lead to nightmare levels of spam.

Still, for the best protection against spam, you should never post your main email address to a webpage or news forum.

If you need to stop junk messages from getting in your inbox, try the free 21-day SpamButcher trial. SpamButcher uses advanced technology to filter spam that other products miss.

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