I think he means why other five, presumably legitimate, companies have his email address when he never signed-up for them. My guess is it may be someone like F

I think he means why other five, presumably legitimate, companies have his email address when he never signed-up for them. My guess is it may be someone like Facebook who used to share "your friends' data" with third-party companies. So one of your friends, who may have your email, allowed a third-party company to get that list of his contacts (including your email) via the Facebook API (which at the time may have allowed this sort of sharing). Even today, a ton of Android, and until more recently iOS, apps would collect your contact list, which means YOU shared your friends' phone numbers with some random app company. I imagine many of those friends would be pissed off at you for allowing their phone numbers to fall into the wrong hands, too, and now getting spammed all the time (if only they knew how the spam companies got their phone numbers to begin with).