There are several common ways that spammers can get your email address: Crawling the web for the @ sign. 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.

How can I stop spam emails from my email address?

So, here are the five simple ways you can take to help eliminate spam emails.Mark as spam. Delete spam emails. Keep your email address private. Use a third-party spam filter. Change your email address. Unsubscribe from email lists.

How do spammers know my name?

Spammers often release information-gathering programs called “bots” to collect the names and e-mail addresses of people who post to specific newsgroups. Bots can get this information from both recent and old posts.

How do phishing organization obtain your email address?

Spammers have traditionally harvested email addresses by scraping the web — kind of like Google does — and look for email addresses mentioned on websites. For example, someone may post a comment like “Email me at jon@example.com”. The spammer would then add this address to their spam lists.

Can someone steal your email address?

Cybercriminals can try to steal not only your financial and personal information, but your passwords, too. This means a cyberthief could take control of your email accounts, using them to send out fraudulent messages to your contacts or to steal any personal or financial information youve sent in past email messages.

What if I opened a spam email?

If you have inadvertently opened an infected email attachment or responded to a spam message there are some steps you should take immediately to keep yourself protected. If you open an infected attachment or respond to spam using a lab or library PC you should immediately contact the IT Service Desk.