Spam is not limited to unwanted advertising. Fraud, malicious links and phishing attempts can also represent a significant portion of unsolicited email traffic.
How are email addresses discovered?
Addresses may be collected from public websites, historical data breaches, automated scanning or purchased mailing lists.
Address guessing
Once a business domain is known, common addresses such as info@, sales@ or firstname.lastname@ can be generated automatically.
Data breaches
If a service you previously used suffers a data breach, your email address may later appear on multiple spam lists.
How can businesses reduce spam?
- Avoid unnecessarily publishing email addresses
- Do not interact with suspicious messages
- Use reliable spam filtering
- Regularly review domain and mailbox security
For the opposite problem, read Why Business Emails Go to Spam.