Michael J. Mahon wrote:
I'm in much the same position since 1999, so that factor can't be the difference (unless the particular newsgroups matter a *lot*).
Over that rather long time, I've habitually read and responded to less than six newsgroups, a couple concerning genealogy, the A2 ones, a skydiving one, and one for a cult a friend joined 12 or 13 years ago.
I really can't say if any of them did or didn't contribute to the problem.A fair number seem to have originated (at least in the time period and domain name) when I first moved my voter registration to California. It even seems tenuous to me, but they still pop up on occasion.
A very few come through a vax address I still have at a university in Ohio.The majority seem to have only a small number of origins. I even recognize repeated spoofed addresses.
Clearly, we have different experiences, and still no clear evidence about what "attracts" spam to explain the huge differences.
I learned a really long time ago to never click through on anything that arrives unsolicited.
It also seems that once a large spammer gets an address, it can spread exponentially.