How did the section of canadian govt find my spam catcher account?

Factual Questions
1

Everyone has a spam catcher account, it’s the account that you sign up for stuff with (this particular one has my subscription to straight dope, and misc comics, and self improvement newsletters, etc)

But anyway, I entered all my information in making me an 18+ (I’m not exactly sure how old I was) New York resident Zip code:12345. Somehow some where someone figured out that I was an young Canadian Citizen, and now I have an email in the account telling me about the election.

I know I sign up for a lot of stuff from that account, but I never remember signing up for an elections canada newsletter. How did Hotmail figure out that I was canadian? And moreso how did the govt find out that Some_Address@hotmail.com belonged to a canadian, a young one at that? Is Big Brother watching me, how did they figure out that I’m canadian?

Thanks

2

12345? Hey, I’m from Schenectady too! (At least online.) I sure hope all those web sites collecting this valuable “data” realize that zip code 12345 must be the most “wired” zip in the US.

As to your question. Spammers sell lists to idiots. So some spammer had a list with your hotmail account, some contractor for the CG asked the spammer if he had a list of Canadian voters and the spammer said “Sure, yeah, right here. And I’ll throw in Morgan Fairchild’s email address too. That’s the ticket.”

It takes two to spam: the spammer and the idiot customer. (Who is frequently another idiot spammer.)