Harvesting Email Addresses

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by Debbie Solomon

The first time I saw these websites that offer you thousands and thousands of opt-in email addresses for just pennies, it was so tempting and so inviting, I ALMOST fell for it. Heck, who can resist it? You don't have to work your butt off trying to gain subscribers. This is a ready made subscriber base and also potential clients for my product. And this software that is offered that will extract people's email addresses from newsgroups, messageboards, etc... This is just so easy to do, and a lot less time consuming then having to advertise, advertise, and advertise some more.

BEWARE... This is called Harvesting Email Addresses. Sure they make it sound so simple, and legit, but it isn't. Even the BEST OF US is always tempted by this ploy, but PLEASE do not fall for it. This is NOT Opt-In. These people are NOT asking for your offer. These addresses are harvested. They did not ask to be added to any of these lists. How about you? Do you have an email address that you NEVER use, but suddenly you are receiving tons of spam? Well, YOUR email address has been harvested and sold. How would you like to fall victim to their ploy of selling YOUR email address to others? I promise you, you will get in so much trouble if you decide to buy one of these lists, or use software for that purpose, it is only a matter of time before you face dire circumstances.

To be honest with you, harvesting email addresses is not illegal. You will not be fined and you will not go to jail. But what will happen will hurt your business immensely. Here are just some of the consequences you will face:

--You will lose your ISP.
--You will lose your Domain host.
--You will lose your Domain.
--Your name will be added to the spam list.
--Your business will be blacklisted.
--You will gain a very bad reputation as a spammer.