[ian@huth]

Spammers tend to target the domains that have the largest number of customers hence NTL accounts are near the top of the list for spamming. Because of the way that some spammers work SMH in post #4 is correct in saying which of the two examples he quoted will receive the most spam. However spam can further be reduced by putting a number in the first three characters of the email addy. Some spammers have built up dictionaries of surnames and use these to target the bigger domains. They will prefix the surname with all combinations of 1 and 2 letters and then for each will add up to four numbers at the end. This will result in millions of emails being sent but quite a number of correct email addresses will be caught. Spammers can send out millions of emails a day through zombie and proxy systems and only get a small percentage through but they use techniques that tell them the ones which more than likely get through which they then use themselves and sell on to others. If only a few hundred out of say 10 million a day get through and only 1% of these get fooled and order from them there is the potential for massive profit.