Project Aims to Expose Spam List Vendors

For every opt-in e-mail marketing effort, there must be dozens of Internet-polluting schemes like the pitch excerpted below:

“This CD contains 136 Million email addresses and a list of 39 Million REMOVES, people who are known to request removal from e-mailers’ lists. Knowing who NOT to send email to is as important as knowing WHO to send email to!!!!

“SO... provided you comply with the law, you can ADVERTISE your business, product, services or ideas to MILLIONS by sending email, and avoid 39 Million REMOVES!!! The whole list sells for only $99 and the addresses are yours to keep to use over and over!!”

A couple of Portland, OR residents have launched a project called No On Spam aiming to fight underground e-mail-spam-list merchants like the one represented above by publishing as much information as they can about them.

The project does not have opt-in list vendors in its crosshairs, according to one of its principals, Hannah Martine, a marketing and advertising consultant.

“E-mail marketing is a part of life,” she said. “We’re not after the good people; we’re after the bad people. The people that we want to expose are the people who steal [legitimate marketers’] opt in lists, and then sell them on the Internet.”

She added that the project’s other principal, David Skinner, buys e-mail addresses from underground list merchants using temporary e-mail addresses and his PayPal account, which enable him to do so anonymously. The idea is that a reputable opt-in list merchant wouldn’t do business with someone using an anonymous account. Skinner then publishes as much contact information about the seller as he can and puts it into a searchable database.

As a result, for a fee, consumers can type in an e-mail address at No-OnSpam.com and see who is selling their information, said Martine.

“I’m a marketing person and David is a technology guy,” she said. “We’re after the people who sell the lists, not the spammers. We buy those lists so that we then have the contact information for the people who we buy those lists from.”

The two claim in a press release that they have purchased e-mail lists containing more than 3 billion e-mail addresses.

Martine said the two realize that there may not be a whole lot people can do even if they know who is selling their addresses, “but I want to know who is selling my e-mail address. The first step [to a solution] is always knowledge. People have a right to know who is making money off selling their information on the Internet.”