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Comment by jlawer | Hacker News Reader

The use case is marketing email. Sending to non-existent addresses can radically affect deliverability.

If the address is to a large host, then they will use reaching invalid email addresses as evidence that you are not keeping to best practices. They will throttle deliverability, and possibly reject email.

If your sending to an invalid host, then your mail sending provider (if your using one) may consider you a bad customer and send you through a lower grade of outbound IP addresses.

Frequently new registrations are processed at once as batch imports from another system or from a partner. There is a need to remove these invalid email addresses pre-sending and hurting sending reputation.

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Any engineer or product team that uses this lacks ethics and is putting their company at risk for CANSPAM.

If you work at a company that would abuse hibp and a direct mention in CANSPAM you should refuse the work.

This is not for “marketing emails”. This is for spammers.

They’re the same thing, really.

Not really: but majority of spammers think that they are doing marketing.

I've never once received a "marketing email" that wasn't spam.

That’s you (and the large part of HN who doesn’t know anything about normal users). When GDPR came into effect, we even had people write us that they were annoyed having to reconfirm, as obviously they still wanted our newsletter.

Some people want to receive marketing emails. The exact same emails are spam to the rest of us. If you default opt-in users and don't make blanket unsubscription from all marketing emails easy (and make the clear distinction [both internally and externally] between emails regarding the existing functionality of products/services that we've already paid for and emails to ask for more revenue from us, which includes copy supported by advertisers), then you're a spammer, simple as that.

Spammers aren't necessarily evil, but definitely annoying, and annoying customers is a good way to lose them. It's easy to drink the coolaid and eat the dogfood when you're paid to like it or have a passion for creating it but potential customers have roughly the opposite incentive and it pays to remember that.

I receive a lot of unread, unwanted email from companies I pay money to every month. It's ridiculous.

I agree with all you said. But there are many comments on HN that are "all marketing is spam in general".

> If you default opt-in users and ... then you're a spammer, simple as that.

There is no "and". If you default opt-in users, you're a spammer.

> Spammers aren't necessarily evil

What?

Every few months, or when there's a big disaster, I get spam from Unicef, trying to get me to donate more money.

The emails are undoubtably spam, but (in my opinion) Unicef itself isn't an evil organisation.

There's some things right on the edge, like Netflix as an example. They're never trying to sell me anything; they've got my $N/month. The emails (that I don't read until now to sample them) are suggestions of shows I might like. User retention mail and promoting the shows they own the rights to are spam, but not all of it is.

My credit union sends infrequent warnings about recent phishing and scam techniques. I never opted in to those emails but they're not useless for everyone and possibly do net good.

I think a good heuristic is to look at the value provided in emails; if the recipient stands to benefit significantly more than the sender (on average) then it's not spam. Sure, my credit union has to deal with less hassle reversing charges or resetting passwords but it's quite a lot more hassle to be a victim of phishing or other scams.

Yup, nobody wants those emails. Unfortunately sales people and marketers are excellent liars and they convince higher ups that it's worthwhile.

I have a common name first year/generation gmail account. The volume of mail I receive that I didn't solicit is mind-boggling. Not just spammers, but it's obvious that people have saved the wrong address in their browser suggestions, and that people give it out when asked for an email addresses at retail. Disney employees, California private school parents, iPhone receipts and apple IDs. Taxes, warrants, bail bonds, social security information. People are f'ing stupid when it comes to email.

Everything should require a confirmation before you assume it's valid. Not because it doesn't exist but because it might not be who you think it is.

Used to be in the same camp, before starting my own company. While the border is thin, it is clear, and there is a difference between marketing and spam.

I think you proved the point: when the spammer send spam they think they are doing marketing.

If that was the case, all newsletter senders in the world are spammers too. And all spammers thinking they are marketers is not logically equivalent to all marketing is spamming

Fair enough, if I opt-in it isn't spam.

I don't know about you, but I'm subscibed to several newsletters out of my own volition.. Are they spamming me then?

> I'm subscibed to several newsletters out of my own volition.. Are they spamming me then? reply

No, since you signed up on your own volition, obviously they are not unwanted emails.

But I always uncheck the newsletter etc. box and still get tons of them. From legit companies. That's spam, and goes straight to junk mail.

I have! Expensify. Not a customer, and never have been. Signed up because I was considering using the service. The emails are exceedingly infrequent and delightful to read.

Only “marketers” make that distinction.

And majority of marketing is perceived as spam.

we're on the cusp of defining a new internet law here

All marketing emails are spam, most spam is marketing emails.

What grinds my gears, is a company which has "important info" emails you cannot opt out of, but then it is still 95% spam.

My bank tried this during the start of the pandemic. Yeah, that kind of scummy.

"How to get CERB! Also, we're awesome and here are products to help you!"

(cerb == initial canadian relief payments)

Scum.

If you’re sending to someone who actively subscribed and wants to hear from you it’s not “marketing”, it’s information. Basically a newsletter.

Otherwise it’s spam.

I don't know if it's always spam, but it's up the same creek as trying to brute-force your way into someone's heart.

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