Last Updated on Monday, 28 December 2009 11:47 Tuesday, 14 April 2009 17:00

Q: Why do I get so much spam even though I never give out my email address?

A:  This can be a complex question to answer.

Do you publish email addresses on your company website?  If so, you are giving out your email address to automated email address harvesters without knowing it.  It may be your email address or a general address like This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , but if that email address points to you and your co-workers, it's your email address, and you are giving it out to anyone in the world who looks at your website.

Do you have an anti-spam system of some kind on your mail server or between your mail server and the world?  If so, is it a good one?  Many mail servers come with anti-spam systems built into them, which many overworked sysadmins configure and forget.  Most, if not all, of those built-in anti-spam systems are very poor, depending on the volume of mail handled for your company.

Do you use antivirus software on your users' computers?  Is it tested to catch more than 95% of viruses?  It's hard to believe, but there are a number of computers out there that don't have antivirus software at all.  There's a much larger number of computers that have antivirus software that was probably preinstalled, but it is expired or otherwise broken.  Then, there are the many computers that use free antivirus software in the hopes that it will be "good enough".  Unfortunately, there has never been a free antivirus software that actively catches viruses (without the need for a scan to be run manually) more than 80-90% of the time.  The point is that many email addresses are stolen from infected computers by viruses, and usually your own email address(es) is among those stolen.

Not an easy question to answer, but if you cover these three main points, your spam problems should be kept to a minimum.