I think that a lot of spam is sent to lists of emails compiled in the 90s. Pretty much any email address that ever posted to Usenet is hopelessly compromised. O

I think that a lot of spam is sent to lists of emails compiled in the 90s. Pretty much any email address that ever posted to Usenet is hopelessly compromised. On the flip side, I don't think that the spammers scan websites for email addresses any more. I have an email I publish on my contact page on my writing website (with a mailto: link and everything) that gets close to zero spam, only marginally more than a domainname@domainname.com address that I never publish. Looking at the spam that gets trapped in the filters, I do think that one source of addresses is now compromised accounts or computers since I'll occasionally see spam purporting to be from people I know.