Many people never even consider that the fake address they’re using might actually belong to a real person. I’ve pointed this out to friends on occasion, and they were shocked to realize they might be increasing someone else’s spam. It’s not at all uncommon for that “someone else” to turn a suddenly over-popularized address into a spamtrap, feeding it directly into their anti-spam software.

If you’re particularly concerned about people putting fake addresses into your web forms, give them the option to not include an address at all. That way, you’re not sending unwanted email.

Because bob.com didn’t ask you to send him mail, of course. From a recipient’s point of view, they can’t tell whether you’re spamming them because a customer lied when they signed up or because you bought a spam list, and they don’t care. Sleazy marketers have so thoroughly poisoned the well that assuming the worst is correct more often than not. And if customers distrust you enough to lie when they buy stuff, that suggests their opinion matches that of the people you’re spamming.

This may be unfair, but in my experience, the louder that senders complain about unfairness, the cruddier their practices are.

I am kind of asking from a bit of a print designer background. We are going to a big conference and just “rented” the attendee list for a one time snail mail blast. Cool, no big deal. Then to my shock I found out the list was riddled with almost 100 “snail mail traps” which are there to see if you mass produce the labels and mail to the list multiple times.

So I just wanted to check with you and ask if I am missing something on this idea of a spamtrap? For the idea of confirming data entered on forms we are in the process now of changing over so that when someone enters their email (say bob@bob.com) it would confirm that at the least bob.com is a valid email server. While it won’t fix every problem it should help?

As always, love the reads.
Jordan