Oh my gosh, Alex--I just read the article. That is terrible! How do these people get our addresses? Buy them from some place we've legitimately contacted for whatever reason (contest entry, etc.)? Pluck it out of thin air? Scary!
Ignorant as I was (and still am) about the internet, I did have the strong feeling that it wouldn't be a good idea to use my name as part of my e-mail address, when I first got my computer. It came with so many minutes free if you signed up on AOL , and that's one of the things that made me not sign up with them (whew)--my first submission was already taken, and they gave me a "suggestion" consisting of parts of my actual name. I exited. I imagine it would be fairly easy to find an active account by guesswork, using a huge place like yahoo, say, and trying common names/nicknames.