Years ago my children created a hotmail account for my wife. Despite continually "Sweeping and Blocking", there is literally never a day goes bye that she doesn't receive spam, much of which are security risks. Fortunately and surprisingly though, she never (so far) opens anything she doesn't recognize. I never get any spam in my ISP pop3 (Windows Live Mail) account, never any in my gmail account and perhaps one/month in yahoo mail. So yes, her email address is out there but to at least some extent, mine has to be too, so I don't understand how hotmail is so inefficient! I've offered to close that account and start all over again but notifying every contact and sites which use her email address as the username does seem quite daunting. So do you have any suggestions on how to shore hotmail up and thank you?
Have you set up any rules? Like your wife, my email address is out there everywhere also and I had spam coming from everywhere. I went to my settings and set up rules to delete them without me having to see them. This way, I never know they existed. For example, I have some rules set up so that if there is a certain word in the email, it is automatically deleted without me knowing it was ever there. This may be the "sweeping and blocking" that you were referring to but I thought I would suggest just in case it wasn't. It has really helped for me.
You're welcome. It has really made a difference with me. I may have a bunch of rules but it pays off in the long run.