{"id":1467,"date":"2010-08-06T08:10:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-06T08:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcbook.local\/wds\/playground\/cybertrust\/2010\/08\/06\/how-do-spammers-get-my-email-address\/"},"modified":"2023-05-15T23:03:06","modified_gmt":"2023-05-16T06:03:06","slug":"how-do-spammers-get-my-email-address","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/security\/blog\/2010\/08\/06\/how-do-spammers-get-my-email-address\/","title":{"rendered":"How do spammers get my email address?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">There are several common ways that spammers can get your email address:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><b>Crawling the web for the @ sign.<\/b> Spammers and cybercriminals use sophisticated tools to scan the web and harvest email addresses. If you publicly post your email address online, a spammer will find it.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><b>Making good guesses&#8230;<\/b> <b>and lots of them.<\/b> Cybercriminals use tools to generate common user names and pair them with common domains. These tools are similar to the ones that are used to crack passwords. And they work.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><b>Tricking your friends. <\/b>Even if you know better than to publicly post your email address on the web, it could still be stored in the email inbox of anyone who&#8217;s ever emailed you or whom you&#8217;ve ever emailed. Cybercriminals can steal contact lists or use <\/span><span style=\"font-size: small;\">social engineering<\/span><span style=\"font-size: small;\"> to trick people into giving them access.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><b>Buying lists.<\/b> Spammers can purchase lists legally and illegally. When you sign up for a website or a service, make sure you read the privacy policy carefully to find out what the site plans to do with your email address.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">It pays to<\/span><a name=\"_GoBack\"><\/a><span style=\"font-size: small;\"> keep your email address as private as possible, but sometimes it seems like there&#8217;s nothing you can do to keep it out of the hands of spammers. For this reason you have to combine smart privacy practices with strong email filters. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">All of the most recent versions of Microsoft&#8217;s email services (including Hotmail) use a strong filter called <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/mail.live.com\/mail\/junkemail.aspx\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">SmartScreen<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: small;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<div style=\"clear: both;\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It pays to keep your email address as private as possible, but sometimes it seems like there&#8217;s nothing you can do to keep it out of the hands of spammers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"content-type":[3659],"topic":[3671],"products":[],"threat-intelligence":[],"tags":[3822],"coauthors":[1879],"class_list":["post-1467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","content-type-best-practices","topic-email-security","tag-microsoft-security-insights"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How do spammers get my email address? 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