List Of Temporary Email Services You May Want To Block With Your Autoresponder - With A Little Rant

[Jason Stepp]

We are generous enough to invest our time, money, and other resources into giving out free stuff in exchange for a valid email address.

And… if you are using Aweber (like I am), the amount you pay for the service depends on the amount of subscribers you have on your list.

Last night, while reading through some of the threads here at the Warrior Forum, I noticed someone who was advertising a disposable email service. The OP was suggesting to people that when signing up for free stuff (like the reports, videos, scripts, templates, headers, etc… that we work hard to put together), they should use a disposable email address (an email address that disappears after a specific period of time). That way they can download the free stuff and never hear from us again.

While there is nothing illegal about doing this, I think it's downright unethical. Especially to recommend this practice in a forum like the Warrior Forum - Where we believe in fair, honest business.

Anyway… Enough of my rant.

I spent about a half hour this morning coming up with a list of disposable email address services.

I recommend going into your autoresponder account and blocking these domains. Why pay for the bandwidth and subscriber if the email address used to get the free stuff will just disappear before your first follow up message is even sent?

Here is how to do it with Aweber



then…




And here is the list that I came up with. If you know of any other disposable email services you want me to add to the list, just let me know.

mailed.in
mailinator.com
trash2009.com
mailexpire.com
MailEater.com
jetable.org
onlatedotcom.info
guerrillamailblock.com
spamhole.com
uggsrock.com
TempEMail.net
smapfree24.org
smapfree24.de
smapfree24.info
smapfree24.com
smapfree24.eu
spamspot.com
spam.la
meltmail.com
anonymbox.com 
dodgit.com
E4ward.com
GishPuppy.com
haltospam.com
mailnull.com
MintEmail.com
Sneakemail.com

[Fraserb]

Hi Jay,

I have just started to set up Aweber for my first affiliate product.

All I can say is thanks to you I'm less likely to fall foul of this sort of thing.

Thanks again,

Fraser
:-)

[Jason Stepp]

You are more than welcome Fraser!

Good luck with your product!

[JohnMcCabe]

Originally Posted by Jay284

We are generous enough to invest our time, money, and other resources into giving out free stuff in exchange for a valid email address.

I don't mean to be negative here, Jay, but give me a break.

Generous? Generosity implies a gift freely given, which would not require an email address - valid or not.

What you are offering is a commercial transaction - trading my attention (via email) for your free stuff. With that attention, you want to persuade me to buy stuff or do other things from which you will profit.

No problem, that's business. But it has nothing to do with generosity.

If you think about it, using one of these disposable services is actually doing you a favor. I don't use aweber, but the solution I do use removes addresses after a hard bounce. So once the script gets the notice that the email address doesn't exist, it get deleted from the database. Doing the same thing with aweber would mean not paying for those addresses once they go bad.

On the other hand, they could give you a valid email address and discard every message unread. Yes they would be on your list longer, but you'd be paying for the privilege of going to their trash folder. You still wouldn't have the chance to sell stuff.

By the way, I did use one of my real email addresses, as I was curious to see just how much "time, money and resources" you were being so generous with...

[theimdude]

seem you don't know the one I am using

[Jason Stepp]

John,

You make a very valid point, so I can't argue with you at all.

However... I think the way SOME people use disposable email addresses is unethical.

Ethics are always something that can be argued either way. I'm not calling anyone out for doing this. I'm just giving people who don't agree with the practice a way to prevent people from just taking stuff.

I think the way the double-opt-in was designed is to help people protect themselves from spam. If you agree to double-opt-in to a list, you should at least be willing to receive at least one follow up email. Otherwise, don't double-opt-in.

That's just my opinion though. Again, it's an ethical dilemma that can be argued either way.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe

If you think about it, using one of these disposable services is actually doing you a favor.

I agree with John.

I live in the real world, and part of the risk I take when I offer people a free e-book in exchange for their email address is that they'll take the free e-book and block my subsequent emails. I don't mind how they do that, as long as they don't report me for "spamming" before they do so.

I have no problem at all with them using a disposable email address. It effectively attends to some of my list-cleaning for me, when they bounce.

This costs me nothing and saves me work and possibly money, compared with the practical alternatives.

[JayXtreme]

I might actually start highlighting some of these throwaway services on my opt-in pages..

That way I will reduce my list quicker and more efficiently than I would usually have to by clipping the addresses manually later

Peace

Jay

[JohnMcCabe]

Originally Posted by Jay284

John,

You make a very valid point, so I can't argue with you at all.

However... I think the way SOME people use disposable email addresses is unethical.

Ethics are always something that can be argued either way. I'm not calling anyone out for doing this. I'm just giving people who don't agree with the practice a way to prevent people from just taking stuff.

I think the way the double-opt-in was designed is to help people protect themselves from spam. If you agree to double-opt-in to a list, you should at least be willing to receive at least one follow up email. Otherwise, don't double-opt-in.

That's just my opinion though. Again, it's an ethical dilemma that can be argued either way.

I wasn't calling you out about your stand on people taking the freebie and running. It's your business, your opinion, and you're free to manage both in any way you choose.

People using throwaway addresses offends you so you block them. Fair enough.

What I was calling you out on was the idea that offering a no-out-of-pocket-cost report in return for an email is somehow this generous act. Add in the fact that you feel that people who do opt-in somehow owe you something - reading at least one follow up, as you said - and we're right back to taking the generosity factor out of the equation.

By the way, between my original post and this one, I had a chance to read the free report you were so miffed about people getting for free. Even at 11 pages, it's long on pre-sell and short on usable information, with plenty of links to your product.

As a teaser for your product, it's really pretty good. As an act of generosity I should feel guilty about not paying for, not so much...

You should do well with this product, if it lives up to the promises. I'm looking forward to the follow-up, to see what you have to offer.

It's just that marketers who think that I should somehow be grateful to them for allowing them to market to me pushes one of my buttons.

I wish you well...

Edit:

One more thing...

The double-opt-in, or confirmed opt-in, was invented to protect mailers against spam complaints. Not to help people protect themselves against spam. Big difference...

[Hesaidblissfully]

I think the solution is to give people a reason to WANT to stay on your list. If they like the content you give them and you let them know that there's more to come, there's less incentive for them to use a fake email address, because then they won't get the additional content.

[bobsstuff]

The BETTER free ebook offers have a sign-up page that says you will be getting
continuing email when you request a free offer.

MOST free ebook offers seem to say, "Sign up for my free ebook", but have no
reference to ongoing email. YES, as marketers we know we will get them, but you
should tell me anyway.

Virtually none of sign up page have even a couple short sentences about what type of
ongoing email you will be receiving. There are a very few exception to that (from
what I have seen).

It is interesting that vendors give away a free report or ebook in exchange for you
signing up for their newsletter, but usually there is no indication what the
newsletter will be about.

I sign up for newsletters that sound interesting without getting a free anything. I
often unsubscribe to list builders free offers. There is no incentive to keep
receiving hundreds of emails

I now have a policy. I use an email address, get the free offer and UNSUBSCRIBE
immediately if the sign up sheet did not tell me it would be offering ongoing email.

If the first emails I get after getting a freebie are sales letters, I unsubscribe.

I do not use throwaway email services, but I do dump email addresses now
and again.

[theimdude]

Originally Posted by Jay284

However... I think the way SOME people use disposable email addresses is unethical.

Not sure why you call it unethical. So that means disposable credit cards are as well. It is just a added way to do business online. If you offer something for free offer it for FREE not FREE with a ?

Over the last 2 days I have been unsubscribing plenty of list I subscribed to. What I find interesting is that a few is still sending me stuff so they allow you to unsubscribe but they have kept your email. So maybe this is what I will do in future since you are bringing this up;

1) Get a gmail account I don't service and flush every few months
2) Use disposable emails

Am I being unethical?

Is it more unethical than marketers offering you free report worth 1000's of $ with a bunch of affiliate links in it and a few upsells?

I don't thinks so as it is part of the WWW and is just marketing. If you offer value I stay. If you offer crap I leave. My right

[timpears]

If you think about it, if the offer is for a free report or what ever, in exchange for your email address, and you give a disposable email address, that is basicly fraud. Nothing different than giving someone a xerox copy of a $10 bill instead of a real $10 bill for a product.

I have an email address that I use to sign up for free stuff that I don't read most of the email that comes to it. So I am as guilty as the next person. There is a chance that I will read a message that goes to that email, but it has to have an enticing subject for me to do that. Other wise it is mass select and delete.

But isn't this all part of the list marketing game?

[CDarklock]

Originally Posted by timpears

If you think about it, if the offer is for a free report or what ever, in exchange for your email address, and you give a disposable email address, that is basicly fraud.

Isn't it fraud to claim that you can't give me my free report until I enter and confirm my email address?

After all, you have a web page - why not just put the link from that email on your web page?

[Hesaidblissfully]

Originally Posted by CDarklock

Isn't it fraud to claim that you can't give me my free report until I enter and confirm my email address?

After all, you have a web page - why not just put the link from that email on your web page?

But there's a difference between saying I CAN'T give you the report until you give your email address, and simply asking someone to enter their email address and you'll mail it there. You're right, if the marketer claimed they literally weren't able to share the report any other way, they'd be lying, but in most cases I've seen, they just make a request and the prospect either complies or doesn't.

Again though, I think the best solution is to let the prospect know beforehand that they're signing up for ongoing content from you and sell them on the benefits they'll get from that content. That way they have less reason to use a dummy email in the first place, and if they don't want to receive ongoing communication from you, then they shouldn't be on your list anyway.

[jendoe]

Originally Posted by timpears

If you think about it, if the offer is for a free report or what ever, in exchange for your email address, and you give a disposable email address, that is basicly fraud. Nothing different than giving someone a xerox copy of a $10 bill instead of a real $10 bill for a product.

I disagree mightily with this.

A disposable email is NOT the same as a fake email, and is not comparable to a conterfeit bill.

A disposable email will still route your mail to a user - for a very limited amount of time (and/or number of messages). You ARE getting a WORKING email. You CAN get a message to the person.

This IS an email address that IS delivering mail to ME. Thus, not fraud.

And, I'll admit it - I use a disposable mail service. I use it to sign up and check out the info I get from different marketers. If the info is GOOD and marketer appears credible, I'll sign up again with my real email, because I don't want to miss good information. If you're sending out compelling, relevant information, I'd be an idiot to not sign up and miss out on that.

But, if all I get is stuff pushed at to buy, well, really, who needs that? And, if there's even a hint that I might not be able to actually get off the list - again - why do that to myself?

I guess I've just seen enough really awful email lists and people who make it impossible to unsubscribe. (Heck, I'm *still* getting automated emails from the guy who did my mortgage almost two years ago, with no "unsubscribe" option, and who I've requested, multiple times, to get me off his list.)

My 2.68-cents.

[Jason Stepp]

I didn't expect to get so many mixed feelings on this subject! I thought I was doing people a favor by providing this list.

I'm really glad I started the thread though anyway. This is the #1 reason I love this community so much! I learned a few things that I put into action already!

Here is what I learned:

-If you are going to offer anything in exchange for an email address, be sure to include a statement on the squeeze page that makes it clear that the visitor is signing up for ongoing messages (I changed my squeeze pages to include this). Previously, I thought it was just assumed... But you know what they say about assuming! - Thanks bobsstuff

-Include information about what kind of ongoing messages subscribers should expect. I also updated my squeeze pages to include a statement about the type of ongoing messages subscribers should expect - again... thanks bobsstuff

-Be sure to ALWAYS include an option to unsubscribe. I've always done this anyway, but I would hate to have the same experience that Jendoe did with her mortgage guy. I made it clear on my squeeze pages that all subscribers will be able to unsubscribe any time they want. - thanks jendoe

Thanks for everyones opinion! It was a great learning experience!

[Black Hat Cat]

There is nothing unethical, immoral, fraudulent, etc etc about using a temporary email. You agreed to give them an email address...you didn't agree to read their emails.

Having said that, I have to ask, if you are so desperate to avoid hearing what these folks have to say, why the heck are you signing up for their free report in the first place?

[CDarklock]

Originally Posted by Black Hat Cat

Having said that, I have to ask, if you are so desperate to avoid hearing what these folks have to say, why the heck are you signing up for their free report in the first place?

That's not the issue.

No matter how much you say "we respect your privacy and won't sell your email," everybody who DOES sell your email says that, too.

No matter how much you say "just unsubscribe," disreputable companies use the unsubscribe link as a big red flag that says "real person reading the email" and then they sell your address to a bunch of other people.

Even if you're telling the truth, when you tell me "I will send you X," there's a dog not barking in that statement. You're not JUST going to send me X. You're going to extract a blanket boilerplate agreement from me that you can send me any email you want, about any subject you want, at any time you want. I have absolutely no guarantee that you won't send me emails I don't want. Indeed, the smart money says you'll do exactly that.

I trust you to be nice to me so long as I have something you want. When you want something from me, you'll give me all the courtesy in the world. And after you have what you want... well, you won't. Once the transaction is approved and the cash is in your hand, you're just a marketer, and a marketer is just a salesman, and a salesman is just a con artist.

As Seth Godin said (and Michael Hiles recently reminded us), all marketers are liars. You need to earn my trust before you ask for my email. Me, personally, I'm very trusting. Other people aren't.

[Sean Kelly]

Don't forget that the likes of mailinator change their email domains all the time.
You'll have a difficult time keeping up with them.

Some other domains to consider for blocking are:
InstantEmailAddress.com
ThrowawayEmailAddress.com
DaCoolest.com

Sean

[thehypnoman]

I don't think its any worse than have an email adress that you just you for opt-ins.

If the report has your website on and the content is great then they will come back IMHO!

[Robert Puddy]

mailing to non existant email address's has a negative efect on your email reputation

It hurts aweber even if its one email that goes to a non existant address, and there for it hurts those who pay for the service.

I agree with the OP and am effectively banning them as quick as i can find them

Robert

[Arbitrager]

Nice one. You are saving me tons of time. I been thinking of compiling the list for quite some times now. Thanks thanks thanks!! Very helpful indeed.

[whateverpedia]

Originally Posted by timpears

If you think about it, if the offer is for a free report or what ever, in exchange for your email address, and you give a disposable email address, that is basicly fraud.

Promising an ebook/report that "will answer all your questions", then sending them a promo piece for a product/service that actually does the stuff you promised in your report is fraudulent (probably).

One thng that p1sses me off, and quite a few "gurus" do it, is:

I am already on your list. You (non-specific) send me an email with an offer for a new report/video/etc.. When I click through to the page I have to sign up AGAIN. With your next offer, I get two emails exactly the same with the new offer, which once again I have to sign up for. You can see where this is going can't you?

I am already on your (non-specific again) list, why do I need to constantly give you my email address?

In that case (and it happens way too often) a disposable address is the ONLY way to go.

[AmyBrown]

Alternatively, you could have confidence that the content in the free report is so valuable that if a subscriber happened to use a temp email address they'd be sure to sign back up with a real address because they wanted more great stuff from you.

[CDarklock]

Originally Posted by AmyBrown

Alternatively, you could have confidence that the content in the free report is so valuable that if a subscriber happened to use a temp email address they'd be sure to sign back up with a real address because they wanted more great stuff from you.

Great point there, Amy.

I always try to deliver real value to my subscribers. Every single mail I send ought to have important information they want or need to know. Just a few days ago, I got a glowing response to one of my broadcast emails to the list telling me that email was worth the price of the product.

And that's exactly what I like to hear.

I mean, face it, we all like to see the little report that someone bought our product and we made some money... but once you've had that first email or phone call telling you how much the customer LOVES your product, you aren't looking for purchase notifications anymore. What you're looking for is the next customer you've made that happy.

And if you never do that for your customers, you'll never understand why.

[sbucciarel]

Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe

I don't mean to be negative here, Jay, but give me a break.

Generous? Generosity implies a gift freely given, which would not require an email address - valid or not.

What you are offering is a commercial transaction - trading my attention (via email) for your free stuff. With that attention, you want to persuade me to buy stuff or do other things from which you will profit.

Exactly. You really aren't doing us a favor with your "gift". You do hope to make sales from us by giving us this "gift".

If I am interested in the "gift", I will subscribe and get the gift. I use my real address. Normally I will give you an opportunity to prove yourself, and normally, your emails will fall short of my expectations.

Very often, with minutes after receiving this "gift", I will get two emails trying to sell me something that I'm mostly not interested in. I will continue to get these emails that are unimaginative and intrusive because of their frequency in my email box until I get sick of it and just unsubscribe.

Often the gift is not as good as it was described to be and the offers do not interest me and the mailings are far too frequent.

I recently unsubscribed from one "gift giver" and he emailed me and asked me why.

I simply said, that no matter who you are, I do not want two emails in the same day from you.

There are people who are gifted at email marketing, but most are not. I never unsubscribe from a "gifted" email marketer.

[garyv]

I think the point of the OP is being missed here by most. Some email services (including the big one - Aweber) will keep an email address on the list, until the person opts out, or is deleted by the list owner. That means, even though your disposable email address has disappeared, the list owner still has to pay for your slot. - Yes he could delete it, but it becomes extremely tedious when you have a large list to do this.

So it makes perfect sense to want to block these temporary emails. Of course if your "free report" is full of links, then it may still be beneficial to allow temporary email addresses.

What I really don't understand is - if you want the free report without having the follow ups - Why don't you just OPT OUT instead of costing the list owner by staying on their list?

[BIG Mike]

Nice one Jay - this is very useful. I agree with you wholeheartedly thaat using throwaway email addresses is BS. I use my own A/R, but I think I'll incorporate your list anyways.

You should maintain this list and set up a squeeze page for others to subscribe to if you plan on maintainng the list.

Incidentally, I also agree with John McCabe about the "Gift" part - I know it's a subtle difference, but it's always bugged me.

[Chris Steiner]

There will always be those who want to game the system, and you can spend your time trying to stop them if you like. My experience says that the numbers are sufficiently small that I would rather focus on getting more serious people rather than worry about stopping those who try to game things.

Originally Posted by CDarklock

That's not the issue.

No matter how much you say "we respect your privacy and won't sell your email," everybody who DOES sell your email says that, too.

No matter how much you say "just unsubscribe," disreputable companies use the unsubscribe link as a big red flag that says "real person reading the email" and then they sell your address to a bunch of other people.

Even if you're telling the truth, when you tell me "I will send you X," there's a dog not barking in that statement. You're not JUST going to send me X. You're going to extract a blanket boilerplate agreement from me that you can send me any email you want, about any subject you want, at any time you want. I have absolutely no guarantee that you won't send me emails I don't want. Indeed, the smart money says you'll do exactly that.

I trust you to be nice to me so long as I have something you want. When you want something from me, you'll give me all the courtesy in the world. And after you have what you want... well, you won't. Once the transaction is approved and the cash is in your hand, you're just a marketer, and a marketer is just a salesman, and a salesman is just a con artist.

As Seth Godin said (and Michael Hiles recently reminded us), all marketers are liars. You need to earn my trust before you ask for my email. Me, personally, I'm very trusting. Other people aren't.

CDarklock - I think I agree with the point you are making, but I'm not entirely sure I understand it. It seems you are saying that marketers can not be trusted, but as a marketer your job is to build trust, then stay true to it. This take on what you mean comes from more than just this quoted post, but mostly from there, so if I am wrong please correct me.

One of the best pieces of advice I've received in relation to this position is to offer information for free. That means no opt-in or other transaction. Actually free. And encourage people to give it to other people if they like it. Then give enough value in the report that a person will want to subscribe to your newsletter, and give them a way to do so.

No commitment, just encouragement. Then offer value and deliver. That is the best way to conduct business if you ask me.

Chris

[Ken_Caudill]

It's just that marketers who think that I should somehow be grateful to them for allowing them to market to me pushes one of my buttons.

If you like it, buy it. If not, don't waste my time or money.

Prospects who waste my time and money push one of my buttons.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Ken_Caudill

If you like it, buy it. If not, don't waste my time or money.

Prospects who waste my time and money push one of my buttons.

YouTube- Broadcast Yourself.

"No, I already get the Times"

[Leigha]

Well being new here, and only into IM for over a year, I might not know the ropes of how this all works but I will say... thanks Jay! I use Aweber too and if they aren't knocking these people off my list then I will. My price goes up the longer my list.

Leigha

[Jesus Perez]

Great resource. You can ban in GetResponse by going to Contacts > Blacklist and entering the domains like so:

@mailed.in
@mailinator.com
@trash2009.com
@mailexpire.com
@MailEater.com
@jetable.org
@onlatedotcom.info
@guerrillamailblock.com
@spamhole.com
@uggsrock.com
@TempEMail.net
@smapfree24.org
@smapfree24.de
@smapfree24.info
@smapfree24.com
@smapfree24.eu
@spamspot.com
@spam.la
@meltmail.com
@anonymbox.com 
@dodgit.com
@E4ward.com
@GishPuppy.com
@haltospam.com
@mailnull.com
@MintEmail.com
@Sneakemail.com

[trafficwave]

People taking your freebie is just part of the process. Kind of like sampling at a grocery store. Some person stands there all day giving away free samples in hope that someone will buy, there is no obligation on the part of the person receiving the sample.

They don't owe the person or the company anything at all. Most of the time, the shopper takes the sample and goes on about their business. Sometimes, the shopper buys the sampled product.

These are the facts of life in marketing and sales. It's all a numbers game.

But here is where I have a problem:

Suppose someone uses a "disposable" email address.

Suppose your autoresponder company charges you based on the total number of addresses in your account(s).

Now that the address is no longer accepting your messages, is your autoresponder company still charging you for that address? (You may be surprised).

I don't mind if someone takes me up on my freebie offer. It's part of the deal. If the offer is good and on-target, the prospect is engaged and we get to do more business.

If they are not engaged, they have every right to unsubscribe, disappear, cancel their email address, whatever.

I just don't think it's right for some of these autoresponder companies to keep charging you for those addresses.

[RefundHost]

Good post.

However, if you are giving away something really good
and you have valuable content in your newsletters
then you probably don't need to worry about this.

[Martin.Avis]

As has been said, some AR companies count the size of your list based on how many people have signed up - not on how many have unsubscribed or become undeliverable. SO if you list goes over the magic 10,000 because you have 5,000 people on it whose temporary email addresses have expired, you pay more.

I believe in the case of AWeber you can delete these addresses manually, but in others - EmailAces, for example, once an address is on your list you pay for it forever. You cannot delete the dead addresses. I have recently asked them to do just that and they refused.

Not all ARs have that policy, of course. But if you happen to use one that does, then I think the OPs suggestion is a very good one.

The only problem is that the list he provided probably only scratches the surface and new throwaway domains are cropping up all the time, so keeping such a list current would be next to impossible.

Martin

[trafficwave]

Originally Posted by Marc Rodill

Uh...

I think everyone who agree's with John and Alexa's point of view (which is fine), are missing one thing:

We Have To Pay For The Email's That Are No Good!

THEIR email disappears... WE pay for it.

Sure, you could say the subscriber # would be negligible, but it ALL adds up.

I block! ;-)

Not all autoresponder services charge based on list size.

I've always found it interesting that some of these companies expect you to pay them for emails that can't even be delivered to (for whatever reason).

If your gym membership suddenly started charging you more because you're now stronger and can lift more weights, you'd probably switch gyms.

If your cell phone company started charging you based on the number of contacts in your address book (regardless of whether the number is any good, ever called, or even accurate), I bet you'd switch providers pretty fast, too.

But when your autoresponder company does it, that's ok?

Even more amazing, when people ask why this is acceptable with autoresponders, we see replies like, "Well... if you can't afford to pay more you must not be very good at your business."

Does that really make sense to anyone?

They really think you should pay more because you "can" (or "should be able to")?!?

I mean, if they're going to charge you for every email in your database AND they don't clean out dead, bouncing, undeliverable emails .... Hmmmm ...