Here's a disturbing stat:
"In one experiment, a fresh e-mail address was posted in an online chat room to see how long it would take spammers to locate it. The first piece of spam arrived at the address eight minutes later." (From a report profiling a prolific spammer.)
I recently changed my personal e-mail address to avoid the average 100 spams I was receiving a day. I've now directed my account to discard all mail sent to the old address. I've got several dummy address (yahoo, hotmail, etc.) that I use to sign up for newsletters, on-line accounts and the like. Only friends and family have my new address. No more spam, right? Wrong. I have a catch-all account that collects e-mail associated with robbyb.com. It doesn't matter if there's an active account sending or receiving mail. With the latest outbreak of MyDoom, it's increasing. I know I am not infected with the virus, but rather my account is getting spoofed as a sender, and I am receiving the returned e-mails from inactive or incorrect accounts.
I wish I knew of a way to prevent this from happening. If anyone out there does, please leave a comment. Thanks.