What a catch-all email can tell you about business dark practices

This article is following a recent thread I did on Twitter.

A few years ago, I bought a domain name just for my emails, and implemented a catch-all on it: I now receive anything that is sent to an email @ this domain.

Since then, every single time I’m subscribing to a new website, I’m using a unique email address. If anything happen to this email, I can search for this address in my mailbox, and check the content of the previous emails: the first email I got is usually when and where I subscribed.

Here are various companies practices I discovered. The good thing is that when one of them becomes too annoying, I can simply take all the emails addressed to this username, and forward them straight to the trash.

1. The random spammer

This is a classic one. It was already there 15 years ago, and was probably there since spam exists. Some people will send emails to contact@example.com, info@example.com, webmaster@example.com, etc.

Some companies use that to reach the company, and sell corporate services or scam, like the World-Business List (you think you register for free, but contractually sign for a paying subscription. Don’t fall for that).

2. The re-subscriber

Some businesses will re-subscribe you to their newsletter even when you opt-out. You don’t need a catch-all to discover that, but as you gave a unique email address, you’re now sure that it’s not a friend having fun giving you this, or someone else selling your data.

It’s probably the most common practice, as it’s usually a bad implementation of a synchronisation between their user databases and their newsletter. But it also feels that you are trapped in an infinite loop, unsubscribing again and again.

The real risk for a company implementing that is to be marked as spam, even if they genuinely think that their users can unsubscribe.

3. The fake unsubscriber

My favorite one. When you ask companies to delete your account, they will simply add a prefix to your email address. While some are smart enough to change the domain (unique.name@example.com.delete), some will change the username (delete.unique.name@example.com). If you are the owner of example.com, you will receive the latter with a catch-all.

For instance, a meal delivery started to send me emails out of the blue. I asked them to delete my account. They “did” it. A year later, they started to email the same address, with a prefix. It was easy to confront their support.

When you catch a company doing that, it really feels like you have direct access to their database. As if you knew something that you’re not supposed to know.

4. The email recycler (or cross-poster)

You subscribe to a service that you are interested in. Then the company behind that service uses your email in the communication of aaaaaaaall their products and services.

It becomes worst when you are interested in the upcoming product, then subscribe (with a new email address), and start receiving multiple times the same newsletter.

Trying to milk an audience will only result in a higher unsubscribe rate, damaging your brand and your emailing reputation.

5. The email reseller

One of the many cancers of the internet. Do I still need to explain this one? It’s simply when someone get your email, and sell it to other companies. Data is money.

It might be for general purposes — quantity over quality — but it becomes more interesting once they are able to target more precisely: industry, country, age, income, etc.

It could also be done by individuals: do you remember when people used to add all their LinkedIn contacts to their corporate mailing list?

Photo by Hannes Johnson on Unsplash