Many people don't realize that there are hacker /harvesting programs that can "take" your email address from any email you send into the internet.

Also if you forward or receive a lot of forwards with multiple addresses showing??
you can bet those are email gold mines for hackers and spammers.

Plus at many sites you may have signed up for things - and they will sell your email address..

[Here are some ways email addresses can harvested.

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Email addresses can be harvested from posts in forums, Groups, guest books, News, blogs, IRC, chat rooms, instant messengers, email lists, and newsletters that publish or provide email addresses or where an email address is in your signature area.
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Email addresses on web pages can be harvested by even the most mundane of harvesting software, whether printed as plain text, hidden in HTML tags, or in a mailto: link.
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Email addresses transformed as HTML entities or obfuscated with other other HTML encoding schemes are easily extracted by even relatively unsophisticated harvesting software.
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Email addresses in user profiles at web sites where they can be viewed by the public are also vulnerable.
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Web page forms that require a recipient email address specified in a hidden field make spammers smile.
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Printed material, like directories and magazine ads, are subject to harvesting.
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Domain registration records can have their addresses harvested.
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Email addresses in online white and yellow pages are almost certain to be harvested.
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Email addresses embedded in images can be harvested.

We used this technique on our contact pages for a long time. Eventually, they were harvested, through several address changes. Whether harvested by sophisticated software, or manually, they got on spammers' lists.

Also, email addresses embedded in images are not available to blind readers and those using text-only browsers.
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At this time, some JavaScript obfuscation methods seem to work pretty well as protection from automated harvesters. Yet, it can't be depended upon. The source code for parsing JavaScript is available on the Internet.

It's only a matter of time until harvesting software will be able to extract email addresses obfuscated with JavaScript, just like browsers do. They might already be doing it.
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Friends' and business acquaintances' computers infected with specialized viruses or trojans can hand their entire address books to a spammer's computer — and your address may be in the book.
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Replying to spam will either confirm your address or, if your From: address is different than where the spam was sent to, provide the spammer with another good address to spam.
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Some browsers can be configured to specify an email address for use when logging into anonymous FTP sessions. They might also send the address as an HTTP_FROM header line when grabbing HTML web pages. The address can be harvested in both of those ways by the unscrupulous.

One solution: Specify name@example.com as the address — unless your browser has an actual email client built-in.

I know of no real reason to provide a valid address for anonymous FTP sessions or for the HTTP_FROM header line. In neither case is it normally expected that the address will be used to send you email.
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In your email software, turn off JavaScript, Java applets, and any other active content that you can. Some of these, or the software they might install, might be used to send your email address, or even your entire address book, to a spammer.
a tip-
The Best Secret Email Address

An email account is a mailbox with an email address.

For best protection, the email address of your mailbox should never be used anywhere, for anything other than the identification of the mailbox.

Other email addresses can then be forwarded to the mailbox's address.

If the address of your mailbox falls in the hands of spammers, the address can't just be disabled like forwarded addresses can. Instead, a whole new mailbox needs to be created. All addresses that forwarded to the old mailbox now need to forward to the new mailbox.

It's a whole lot less hassle to keep the address of the mailbox secret. Email addresses that forward to the mailbox can be deactivated and new ones created with relative ease. ]
http://www.willmaster.com/library/tu...il_address.php
more info-
http://www.scambusters.org/stopspam/index.html
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I never use my main Verizon email address - i have other free email accounts and Verizon has sub accounts that you can set up so you can protect your main email address.

You can set your email program to kick out the junk for you.
We can help you find the information to set it up to do that.

What program do you use to access your email?
Outlook, outlook express, Thunderbird or another?
Or do you go to a web page online to access it?

and what operating system are using XP ? Vista etc?
That may not matter but just in case we'll have the info.

Does your anti virus program include any email/spam protections?
It might need to be set up if it does.
If so what kind is it?