David writes: > Guessing and trying? That would require tens of thousands or even millions of bounces for every successful mailing attempt. I don't think anyone is doing it that way. > Online directory provided by her email provider? Which e-mail providers are providing online directories? And how many of these directories allow you to extract addresses without specifying any search parameters (such as a name)? > Not understanding risks, she joins a seniors mail list? Possible, but not likely. > Someone she corresponds with blasts an email to > a bunch of folks leaving all addresses exposed, > and one of the addressees does some action which > exposes the email to a spammer's harvesting process? This is getting more and more farfetched. > Or more explicitly, someone she knows copies her > in a post to a mailing list which is being harvested. A list to which she doesn't belong? Again, this seems unlikely. > The point being that it isn't difficult to end up > in the spammer's email address lists. I have quite a few addresses that remain untouched. Only the ones for which an obvious harvesting path exists have received spam.