E-mail harvesting on PG lists?

This is worrisome...

I decided to create a separate account for my subscription to PG's
mailing lists (to avoid all replies bouncing back due to my strict
whitelist anti-spam filter) -- I created the account on Dec 22, and
today I notice a phishing e-mail ("Your PayPal account"), meaning
that it took less than two weeks for my e-mail address to go from
PG's mailing list to a spammers' database of addresses... Needless
to say that I have not used this e-mail address (but really, really
really 100% absolute certainty that I have not used it in any single
instance), other than to post a couple messages in here.

This is truly worrisome... I wonder if spammers today are basically
subscribing to mailing lists so that they receive the e-mails (seems
like a very obvious trick), or if they're moving to the next level
of "decrypting" the "encrypted / anti-spam" form of e-mail addresses
(the way they're displayed on the mailing list web site)

Any comments? If it is the first option above, then it feels like
by definition there is absolutely nothing that can be done, now
or ever :-(

Carlos
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