Bert Robbins writes:

It seems that quite a few of us have learned that USENET is a great
place to farm valid e-mail addresses and we have decided to reduct the
number of spam in our mailboxes by providing bogus e-mail addreses.

Keeping email addresses secret is a stupid anti-spam tactic, treating it
like a semi-password. An email address only performs to the extent you
spread it around to potential non-spam correspondents. As you do that, it
eventually become publicized somewhere, and then you're sunk.

This was obvious decades ago when secret unlisted telephone numbers were
known to be a useless method of stopping nuisance calls.

If you think you'll just restrict your correspondents to those who won't
leak your email address, then you aren't using email per se. A key concept
of email is that anyone can reach you with it.

If I can't publicize my email address and still control spam, then email is
a waste of time. We'd be better off using something other than email. The
very ideal of email is to publicize your address.