in Follow-Up, Meddling, MT.Net

Deal with it: spammers already have your email

A postscript to the state park spam snafu: some folks seem to be under the mistaken impression that this incident exposed their email address to spammers. I hate to break it to them, but spammers already have their email addresses. They have yours and mine and everyone else’s. If you’ve ever emailed anyone, anywhere, then your email address is ripe for the picking by spammers.

There’s nothing magical about your email address that keeps it from being easily guessed by spammers, if not outright copied. Why some people still think that by keeping their address “secret” they’ll somehow cut down on spam is beyond me.