Bingo. APC pulled the spam trick on me years ago. I filled out one of their warranty cards and I'm pretty sure I provided no email address (not wanting any spam). At the time I was catching all email addresses on my domain in one account and I got a pile of emails from APC with various permutations of my name as an email address -- email addresses that I never would have used or given to anyone even though I would receive any emails that were sent to them. Guess what company I'll never buy from again (the fact that their UPSs fail without any warning doesn't help, either).

Interesting - all I've seen when I've used this technique in the past is emails bouncing. Will keep an eye out for this.

I actively do this. Typically when someone is just trying dozens of permutations of my email addresses they aren't someone I want to talk to or are trying to sell me something.