[Design] [Question] Email addresses and SPAM

[Mimi Yin]

I have 5 personal email addresses that I never give out to any web  
services / on-line retailers, with perhaps 3 exceptions...and I  
basically don't get any SPAM.

2 of these addresses I've had for a couple of months. 1 of the email  
addresses (gmail), I've had for a almost 1.5 years? 1 email address  
I've had for almost 7 years. The last email address, I've had for  
over 10 years. I know that the 10 year-old email address has been  
submitted at least 10 times to various websites by friends: nyt.com,  
evite, networking sites, etc.

I don't have whitelists, blacklists, special filters or anything. Is  
it just the magic server-side SPAM filters?

I have 2 spammy email addresses (yahoo and hotmail). I get 'spam'  
from online etailers where I've signed up for accounts using these  
email addresses. But I don't get much 'unsolicited' spam.

My OSAF email I get tons of spam, even though I've never  
intentionally handed it out, but it's publicly available through our  
mailing list archive?

How naive is it to hope that the email addresses we provide for  
shared collections could escape SPAM the way my personal email  
addresses seem to have escaped SPAM? (It seems unlikely that users  
will use their event at osafofficecalendar.esthers.com email address to  
sign up for accounts on web sites.)

Is ' we don't have resources to implement an effective server-side  
SPAM solution' an argument for shifting the burden of preventing/ 
managing SPAM onto the user in the short-term?

What are other people's experiences with email accounts and SPAM?

Mimi