How Do Spammers Find My Email Address?

Spammers, as telemarketers do a phone number, get your e-mail in two major ways, both of which you have some control over. The first way that spammers get your personal information is through public and private directories from a variety of sources, including e-mail address lookups. The other is through previous business relationships.

Just as there are directories for phone numbers, there are also lists of e-mail addresses. There are public directories that search web based and government servers, as well as the more common private directories maintained by individual servers. Spammers can access private directories using e-mail address lookup sites, but you can also use these services to help protect yourself from unsolicited e-mails by tracing a spammer's e-mail address. While an e-mail address lookup searches for e-mail address, a reverse e-mail search provides the name and server information to which an account is registered.

Your number gets added to directories in a number of ways, but like phone numbers, you can ask for your e-mail to remain unlisted. Simply contacting your e-mail service provider should make you feel more secure about spammers and how they get your number. Of course, spammers won't stop bothering you if you simply request an unpublished e-mail, because they can still get your e-mail in another way, through legitimate business relationships initiated by you. This means anytime you give your e-mail to someone, be that a business, a social networking site friend, or simply a random website, you are taking the risk that this is a source spammers don't use for e-mail addresses.

While you may not be able to completely prevent spammers from getting your e-mail, you can take action against particularly annoying unethical groups. A reverse email search allows you to trace a spam message back to e-mail server from which it was originally sent.

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