UPDATE: A lot of the email addresses listed here are being blocked by Facebook and a few others. If none of the emails below work for you, then please try the list of disposable emails at Ghacks!
I am not talking about absolutely invalid emails. You can get rid of them quite easily using a double-optin method of subscription. What I am talking about are disposable email addresses: email addresses which remain valid only for a few minutes, days or months. Using such email addresses, people can subscribe to your list, get away with whatever freebie you have got to offer them, and then they don’t even need to unsubscribe because the email address itself would expire very soon!
While the subscriber has gotten a very valuable freebie from you, you are left in the dust with an invalid email in your database. You are faced with email bounces, bandwidth wastage, and what not! :)
This can hardly be tolerated! :P (kidding)
Usually, subscribers use a disposable email address when they either:
-Don’t trust the list owner enough (now why would anyone subscribe to such a list, which brings me to the next point)
-Don’t have any interest in what the newsletter has to offer, other than the initial freebies. Personally I really don’t like the idea of attracting subscribers using only freebies as baits, but that could be a discussion for another day.
I have got a confession to make! I too use these disposable email services quite frequently! ;) Long time ago I used them for joining marketing lists, but nowadays I hardly subscribe to any internet marketing list; rather I use them for registering on forums for the purpose of building backlinks-mainly out of laziness. :D If you have been reading NuttieZine long enough, you may be already acquainted with my ultimate secret to getting tons of backlinks at no cost article series. ;)
Anyway, personally, while I don’t mind using disposable emails now and then, I do mind people using them when subscribing to Nuttiezine or buying stuff from me. :P You can call me a hypocrite for that if you like. At least I don’t send out meaningless emails to waste their time. ;)
Now to cut the cr*p, here is a list of domains I have blocked from my database. To add a wildcard entry to a domain, simply prefix the domain with a *@, such as *@domain.com. This is only required if your script/service does not allow you to block subscribers by domains (last time I checked, Aweber allows this).
pjjkp.com (this is the 10 minute email service; please note that 10 minute email changes domains regularly, so you would have to take note of that and update your database accordingly)
mailinator.com (interestingly enough, every new email address I create here gets flooded with Viagra ads within a day or two; go figure :D )
yopmail.com
anontext.com
guerrillamailblock.com
mailmetrash.com (this is the mytrashmail service; please note that mytrashmail changes domains regularly, so you would have to rake note of that and update your database accordingly)
jetable.org
mailexpire.com
OnLateDOTcom1.info (this is the http://www.spambox.us temporary email service)
TempEmail.net
spamfree24.org
spamfree24.de
spamfree24.info
spamfree24.com
spamfree.eu
spammotel.com
spamspot.com
spam.la
mintemail.com
tempinbox.com
DingBone.com
FudgeRub.com
BeefMilk.com
LookUgly.com
SmellFear.com
spamavert.com
dodgit.com
spamgourmet.com
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com
hushmail.com
mailnull.com
e4ward.com
incognitomail.org
deadaddress.com
mailcatch.com
anonymbox.com
lifebyfood.com (this is the http://www.soodonims.com temporary email service)
20minutemail.com
tempail.com
deagot.com
MailScrap.com
This list may not be exhaustive so you are encouraged to share your own list too, if you don’t mind. ;)
What? You did not find this long and boring article useful? That is okay, because at least you got bored. :P Now, will you please click here to post a nice comment? Thanks. :D
Years ago (when I was trying to build a list lead for my network marketing company) my upline kept “giving” me lists of supposedly hot leads. I remember that kind of email address on those worthless lists for sure!
I tried emailing a bunch of them once and almost all of them came back as undeliverable.
Gail
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Daniel Silver. Daniel Silver said: RT @arindamc Is Your List Filled with Invalid Emails? http://bit.ly/gf2nde […]
Would you agree that these kind of disposable email addresses are mainly used by people in the IM-Make money online niches?
@Ari,
Maybe, maybe not. I would however suggest blocking these domains even when building niche lists. Why take chances? ;)
Very useful post Arindam, thanks. Luckily not had too much problem with this, I think it is worst in IM.