What about Tom?

I use tom@hotmail.com as my default bogus email address. Tom has subscribed to so many things because of me.

This is why address verification doesn’t work. The address tom@hotmail.com is a real address. It exists. It accepts mail. And at least one person admits to signing up Tom for mail that the person doesn’t want. I’m sure he’s not the only one.

<- 250 OK
-> MAIL FROM:<test@gmail.com>
<- 250 test@gmail.com....Sender OK
-> RCPT TO:<tom@hotmail.com>
<- 250 tom@hotmail.com
-> QUIT
<- 221 SNT004-MC1F46.hotmail.com Service closing transmission channel

Signups like this do contribute to deliverability problems in a number of ways.

  1. The address tom@hotmail.com may be a spam trap. Sending mail to too many spamtraps can result in mail going to the bulk folder.
  2. It may belong to an actual person. Sending mail to someone who has not asked for it can result in spam complaints and bulk foldering.
  3. It may be a canary address. This is one that gets a lot of spam. If mail goes to this address then it’s likely spam and similar mail is bulk foldered at other recipients.
  4. This may be a test address. It might be used by someone inside Hotmail as a test address.

A few of these fake signups aren’t going to hurt deliverability for most senders. Over time, however, these fake signups are going to accumulate on a list. As they accumulate they can, and do, start to affect deliverability. It you’re hitting a lot of these types of addresses it tells the ISP that you don’t have good subscription practices. The ISP knows you are sending mail to people who don’t want it and never asked for it. Filters are designed to affect mail sent to people who don’t want it and never asked for it.
These kinds of addresses are one reason delivery folks talk about segmenting mail based on engagement. Getting rid of even a few of them off a list can improve deliverability for an otherwise opt-in list.
Address verification doesn’t weed out these address. The test I did above is exactly what most of the verification services do. They’re going to return that tom@hotmail.com is a valid address and it’s going to end up in your list.
For those of you who are the type to put real addresses into signup forms, please don’t. It’s unfair to the people who own those addresses and it’s unfair to marketers. Use an address that you know doesn’t exist – like anything@example.com, .net or .org. These domains are reserved by ICANN and will never have users. Stop directing your unwanted email to an innocent 3rd party. They don’t deserve it, and neither do the senders you’re trying to avoid.

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Dear Email Address Occupant

There’s a great post over on CircleID from John Levine and his experience with a marketer sending mail to a spam trap.
Apparently, some time back in 2002 someone opted in an address that didn’t belong to them to a marketing database. It may have been a hard to read scribble that was misread when the data was scanned (or typed) into the database. It could be that the person didn’t actually know their email address. There are a lot of ways spamtraps can end up on lists that don’t involve malice on the part of the sender.
But I can’t help thinking that mailing an address for 10 years, where the person has never ever responded might be a sign that the address isn’t valid. Or that the recipient might not want what you’re selling or, is not actually a potential customer.
I wrote a few weeks back about the difference between delivery and marketing. That has sparked conversations, including one where I discovered there are a lot of marketers out there that loathe and despise delivery people. But it’s delivery people who understand that not every email address is a potential purchaser. Our job is to make sure that mail to non-existent “customers” doesn’t stop mail from actually getting to actual potential customers.
Email doesn’t have an equivalent of “occupant” or “resident.” Email marketers need to pay attention to their data quality and hygiene. In the snail mail world, that isn’t true. My parents still get marketing mail addressed to me, and I’ve not lived in that house for 20+ years. Sure, it’s possible an 18 year old interested in virginia slims might move into that house at some point, and maybe that 20 years of marketing will pay off. It only costs a few cents to keep that address on their list and the potential return is there.
In email, though, sending mail to addresses that don’t have a real recipient there has the potential to hurt delivery to all other recipients on your list. Is one or two bad addresses going to be the difference between blocked and inbox? No, but the more abandoned addresses and non-existent recipients on a list there are on a list, the more likely filters will decide the mail isn’t really important or wanted.
The cost of keeping that address, one that will never, ever convert on a list may mean losing access to the inbox of actual, real, converting customers.
 

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It's about the spam

Tell someone they have hit a spamtrap and they go through a typical reaction cycle.
Denial: I didn’t hit a trap! I only send opt-in mail. There must be some mistake. I’m a legitimate company, not a spammer!
Anger: What do you mean that I can’t send mail until I’ve fixed the problem? There is no problem! You can’t stop me from mailing. I’m following the law. My mail is important. I’ll sue.
Bargaining: What if I just send mail to some recipients? What if I hire an email hygiene company to remove traps from my list?
Acceptance: What can I do to make sure the people I’m mailing actually want to be on my list?
Overall, my problem with the focus on spamtraps (and complaints to a lesser extent) is that these metrics are proxies. Spamtraps are a way to objectively monitor incoming email. Mail sent to spamtraps is, demonstrably, sent without permission of the address owner. This doesn’t mean all mail from the same source is spam, but there is proof at least some of the mail is spam.
If there is enough bad mail on that list, then reworking the subscription process may be necessary to fix delivery.

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The true facts of spam traps and typo traps

I’m seeing an increase in the number of articles stating wildly wrong things about spam traps. Some have started claiming that typo traps are new. Or that typo traps are newly used by Spamhaus. These claims make for great copy, I guess. Wild claims about how the evil anti-commerce self-appointed internet police are actively trying to trap marketers get clicks. These claims also reinforce the martyr complex some senders have and gives them something to commiserate about over drinks at the next email conference.
I strongly recommend ignoring any article that claims Spamhaus started using typo traps in December 2012. In fact, you can immediately dismiss absolutely everything they have to say. They are wrong and have proven they can’t be bothered to do any fact checking.
I can’t figure out why so many people repeat the same false statements over and over and over again. They’re wrong, and no amount of explaining the truth seems to make any difference. I went looking for evidence.
First, I asked on Facebook. A bunch of my contacts on Facebook have have been running spam traps for a long time. Multiple people commented that they, personally, have been using typos to track spam since the late ’90s. These typos were on both the right hand side of the @ sign (the domain side) but also on the left hand side of the @ sign (the username).
Then, I looked through my archives of one of the anti-spam mailing lists and I see a Spamhaus volunteer mentioning that he had already been using typo traps in 2007.  I asked him about this and he pointed out these are some of his older traps and had been around for many years before that mention. 
Of course, we’ve written about typo domains used by an anti-spam group to catch spam.
The truth is, typo traps are not new and they’re not a new set of traps for Spamhaus. I’ve talked about traps over and over again. But I’m seeing more and more articles pop up that make verifiably wrong statements about spam traps. Here are a few facts about spam traps.
 

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