Good point. Finding contact information for certain individuals is more difficult than it might seem initially, though. Especially if someone has left the acad

Good point. Finding contact information for certain individuals is more difficult than it might seem initially, though. Especially if someone has left the academic setting per se: a common pattern is for people to leave and go to a business or hospital setting, where real contact information can be guarded heavily. You might see that so-and-so works at such-and-such place (maybe), but not be able to find a working contact address, and might not even see a reasonable way to figure it out. You're right that using the author-supplied contact info of a potential reviewer is doubly problematic and probably shouldn't be done. However, at some level I can understand why that happens, because the process often devolves into some chain of contacts to get a working email address anyway.