Drizzle Internet NW - FAQ-How'd spammers get my name?

I got spam in my e-mail. How did they get my address?

There are companies which collect and sell enormous lists of e-mail addresses to would-be spammers. These companies use a variety of techniques, some simple, some sophisticated, to gather up as many e-mail addresses as possible to add to their lists. They include things like scanning every web page and every posting in Usenet for anything that looks like an e-mail address, merging lists of all the first names in baby name books, all the last names in telephone books, and every letter of the alphabet with lists of every ISP on the Internet.