One of the five is guilty

My work e-mail addresses — buzz@nww.com and pmcnamara@nww.com — couldn’t possibly be any more visible, so, as you might expect, they attract a fair measure of spam.

My two-year-old home e-mail address, which I use infrequently and guard almost as zealously as my unlisted telephone number, had attracted no spam whatsoever — literally — until yesterday when the first two pieces arrived. This morning, there were three more.

A trickle of spam after two years of unsullied inbox bliss is nothing to complain about, right? … Wrong.

Six weeks ago I sought mortgage information from a half-dozen lenders; four I found through LendingTree.com, two came recommended by our Realtor.

Only one got our business, which makes the other five prime suspects in the spam outbreak. … I’m oh-so-tempted to publish their names.