How do spammers obtain your email address?

Show description|Hide description

A hooded, masked man holding a fishing rod is displayed on a laptop screen to the left. His rod extends out of the screen to hook a ‘Personal Data’ folder displayed on a second laptop to the right.

Spammers may use automated software to generate email addresses. They can also hack into legitimate websites to gather users’ details. Sometimes, they copy addresses from regular emails that have been copied or forwarded to lots of people without using ‘bcc’.

They may also buy lists of emails from other spammers or scammers. These may be obtained through spam emails or scams encouraging people to enter their details on fraudulent websites, as we saw in Lesson 3 [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .

Even if we take care to ensure we only enter our email address into legitimate websites, we can't guarantee that the website stores our data safely, or even that it hasn't been hacked. This means that there's no way we can stop scammers getting our email addresses (even if we can limit the risks by being careful). Because we can't guarantee our details will be safe, we need to make sure we stay alert to phishing scams.