The most likely way for a SPAMMER to get your email address is to scan it from a public website. The more popular the website, the more likely that email addresses exposed there will be SPAMMED.
The form below will take your email address and turn it into the character entity versions. Simply enter the address and click the button.
SPAMMers often use software automation to scan email addresses from public websites. These scanners are commonly referred to as SpamBots. It has been found that if you obfuscate1 the email address by turning it into HTML character entities, SpamBots (thus far) will not find them. That is, instead of the human (and software) readable version of your email address, use the numeric value of each character in the address. Your browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.) will change the numeric values back into the proper letters when you view the page. But the SpamBots are (thus far) unable to recognize the numeric code version.
Good luck fighting SPAM!
p.s. For those who have a website, I also recommend the use of 1-Hit.com's robots.txt Generator. This tool helps you to give most SpamBots a really bad taste in their mouth before they get a chance to scan your website!
[1] Obfuscate: to make so confused or opaque as to be difficult to perceive or understand: "A great effort was made... to obscure or obfuscate the truth" (Robert Conquest).