I can understand the email/email connection, but I don't see how your visiting a website could result in targeted emails.
How would the senders get your address?
There's got to be something in what you're doing that's making you vulnerable.
Since WWI if not before, it has been a maxim among security circles that critical intelligence is seldom, if ever, the result of discovering single piece or source of information. Rather it is the sum of lots and lots of seemingly unrelated bits of data from lots of different sources that taken together become the "big reveal". The computer's ability to associate small bits of information from hundreds or thousands of sources in seconds is the key modern marketers rely on. They can gather much of the information from your browser including your IP address and use that to search through millions/billions of other apparently unrelated pieces of data gathered openly or covertly from any web site you may have accessed anywhere on the internet to find your email address, the sites you visit, the kind of computer you have, the browser you use, your purchasing habits, the financial institutions you do business with, hoe address, Social Security Number,
etc.. At which point they "own" you.
How can you protect yourself?
- Eschew the use of the internet (which is akin to killing the goose that lays the golden eggs).
- Use a reliable VPN that does not record any of your data (check out NORDVPN, CyberGhost VPN, or EXPRESSVPN and there are many others
- Turn off JavaScript in your browser (NOTE: that is JavaScript not Java which means you will not be able to use virtually any eCommerce websites
- If you are using Firefox, Chrome, or Opera install HTTPS Everywhere (NOTE: HTTPS Everywhere uses Javascript which is a bummer IMO. (WARNING: When searching for a HTTPS Everywhere download the first site I visited (softonic.com) attempted to download MacKeeper which is a "cure" that is worse than any problem it purports to solve.
- Encrypt your email traffic using PGP/GPG (not perfect but better than nothing.}
- Use the TOR Browser and Onion Routing with security settings turned to maximum (which among other things turns off JavaScript)
- Some of the above
- Most of the above
- All of the above
