Spam-- Not Just for Dinner Any More

I have only ever given my newest, personal email account out to close people. I have generally been pretty strident about not giving it out to just anyone in order to see how long I could avoid receiving spam in it. Every single email account I have ever accessed has been clear for the first year and then, slowly at first, and then more rapidly as time goes on, they fill with spam.

Like clockwork, I have had this particular email account for a little over a year now and the spam is starting to roll in. Currently I am only getting a couple a day— usually only 1-2 a day and so far my spam filter on the email is catching them.

My Cox.net account, received through my ISP, gave me a free email which I virtually never used. The last time I logged into it, it was full of over 12,000 spam emails received in a 4 month period.

The Yahoo account, once my main email and now primarily used as the email I provide to companies that insist on having it (and by a few friends who stubbornly refuse to use my new one), gets between 200-400 spam emails a day.

Unless some of my friends have been less than conscientious about how they use my current email account (which I seriously doubt—they all cherish their privacy and hate spam too), this email account should not be out “in the wild.” I have never, not once, used it on any public site in any way. Unless someone used it on a public site for me, there should be no way for spammer to have or get my current email address. Or, do spammers have bots that just randomly pass letters and numbers/symbols into their email program and send emails out to all address combinations? Does it take about a year before they hit on the combo I have chosen? Or is it done with intent—someone decides they don’t like me, so they use my email on wild porn, Viagra, and mortgage and penis enlargement sites in order to fill my email with spam?

How, then, does it happen on each and every email address I get (including the made-up, funny, phony monikers I’ve chosen on occasion) that, after a year’s time, I start getting spam? Do ISPs or email providers have some sort of mechanism in place that lasts for one year and then the veil is lifted and spam magically appears? Is there some agreement that states that ISPs and email providers will wait one year before selling your email address to unscrupulous sites?

I have had email accounts on AOL, Netscape, Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, Bigfoot, MSN, Cox, and probably a half-dozen others over the years. Every single one of them, no matter how carefully I maintain the secrecy and how judiciously I give it out, is good for not more than 1 year before spam starts arriving. Some, like Hotmail and Bigfoot, seem to relish providing spammers with new sources to annoy, and you get spam from day one.

Can anyone explain this to me?