I am the guy who posts as Sam Spade.
I decided a long time ago to not give out a valid email address on any Usenet Group.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are not the only person who is totally fed up with Usenet and the huge amount of spam generated by piracy of real names. I have been victimized by that for many years now; if they find any sort of real name and working email address they begin using it to spread their p*rn and other scams. After more than twenty years on Usenet and Internet how much of that do you suppose I deal with? We are going to begin making it a bit more difficult for them starting immediatly. Henceforth all subject lines _MUST_ have the word 'telecom' with a left bracket and a right bracket [] around the word, or the mail will be tossed by my own filter. The sender will get the auto-ack but with a note saying their mail has been rejected for lack of the magic word. The magic word will not be included in the subject line however. This takes effect immediatly, however there will be a two or three day grace period to allow all writers an opportunity to learn about it. The magic word has to be the very first word in the subject line. PAT]