The common methods a spammer can obtain your email address are:
1.
You installed software or signed up to a service and by mistake consented to receiving later product updates or newsletters. Some companies will also hide in their terms and conditions that they may sell or share your email address with other third parties.
When entering your email address into any signup form or software activation screen, always read how they will use your email or if they share your details with any third parties.
We recommend using a disposable email service such as mailinator for one off emails accounts for downloading software or whitepapers.
2.
Spammers run search bots over the internet to find email addresses in the HTMl of websites.
It’s best to use contact forms instead of listing your email address on your website.
3.
Most spam is sent on mass to many thousands of recipients. The spammers are trying to send spam to every possible combination of email address and domain name, in the hope some of their emails get through.
4.
Unsubscribe links are used to verify if a email address works.
The spammers sends you an email stating if you wish to unsubscribe you reply with a blank message or click a link in the footer.
Doing this is more likely to add your email to the spammers database, instead any company you don’t recognise you should delete or add a spam rule to filter this email to the trash or junk folder.
