I work as an administrator to an email marketing server. I'd like to think I can speak on some authority on this subject. > Is the fear of "people selling your

I work as an administrator to an email marketing server. I'd like to think I can speak on some authority on this subject. > Is the fear of "people selling your email to spammers" a modern myth 100% absolutely. Your email address itself is not valuable or interesting in any way. I can't imagine there being an internet black market for random email addresses, but if I had to guess what they would be worth, it would be fractions of a fraction of a cent per email. Meanwhile, Mailchimp charges ~$0.02 per month for every email contact you hold onto. It makes absolutely no financial sense for your average retailer or newsletter to be selling your email addresses. However, your contact information might get sold if it is attached to high value sales activities. Like if you signed up for a quote on a $50k HVAC system or indicate you are a big donor to certain political causes. Your email address/phone number are valuable in that they are now attached to some pretty valuable purchasing intent. This is where less than scrupulous sites will live to harvest your data. This is still a bit of an outlier activity. If I sell expensive HVAC systems, the only people interested in this data would be direct competitors. If the information is actually valuable, it will be less likely to be widely disseminated.