And I built a slightly more extreme version based on the original! The main difference is you can check multiple domains at once, but the most likely versions still appear early in the list instead of checking each domain as a full set in sequence:
The article gives pretty terrible advice. The advice is against the AUP / ToS of many service providers. The advice is borderline legal, depending on the receiver and on the content of the message.
And it's a shame, because all this stuff about spam is very old. We don't need to learn these lessons again.
Ask people to give you their email addresses, and ask if it's okay for you to send them stuff. Confirm that email address. Include an opt out with every email.
As far as the Aup/Tos for that you can roll your own Smtp. Besides borderline legal is borderline legal. And even things that aren't "legal" are not always prosecuted. Not thinking that someone sending out 5000 spam messages even is going to cause a big prosecution.
More importantly the issue here is the way the post says "a large email campaign". What is defined as "large"?
I don't think taking the time to compile 200 email addresses and send a personal email really is to big of a problem if you've taken the time to go to the effort of doing what the OP is saying (in other words you didn't just buy a list of names). On the other hand if you've gotten mechanical turks and mined 20,000 emails maybe it is.
I don't think (despite the definition) that "spam" is anything unsolicited anymore than calling someone by phone to try to get them to buy something is automatically the same as robo calling or cubicle calling.
You can collapse all these into one step - find an organization they are associated with (like their employer), and take the formats (Johnd@, jdoe@ etc). Stick one into the "To" field, and the remaining into the BCC field. You'll end up with about 8 email addresses total, and 7 will bounce. This works 95% of the time.
Caveat - its probably a bit spammy but the folks I learned this from have to my knowledge never been banned. Use at your own peril.
Important to use a dummy email account for these purposes - you didn't mention this as it might be obvious, but the last thing you want to do is use this method with the email address you actually want to use to communicate with the person in question.
Don't forget the secretary of state. That's always a sure fire winner. Someone from Wonder Widgets LLC ship you crap on Amazon Marketplace or get a horrible app from CrapApp LLC? They're not responding to your emails?
Relief is at hand! Find their LLC, knowing the state helps, but Google can figure that out. Now go to that State's Secretary of State site. Most will let you look up filings for all LLC's and corps. Now you've got the owner's mailing address (probably his/her home) and phone as well as the information for all other officers. Ring them up. You'll be amazed how helpful they'll be now.
The person who wrote the article suggested randomly trying common email formats. I like to do something similar, only to increase the reliability (and decrease the number of guesses), I like to use Google to find his/her company's press releases. Press releases always have at least one email address. This is a great way to figure out what format that particular company uses. It doesn't always work (and is particularly unreliable with extremely common names) but it is still better than random guesses!
> I like to use Google to find his/her company's press releases. Press releases always have at least one email address. This is a great way to figure out what format that particular company uses.
This is something I do all the time. I've guessed the emails of some pretty high-up people who were clearly quite surprised to get an email from a stranger when they've never published their email address anywhere on the public web.
Jigsaw (https://www.jigsaw.com) can be a useful tool to confirm email addresses and also get direct phone numbers. An easy way to bypass their credit payment system is to click "Update All" on the contact screen and then unlock all of the fields by guessing their email address. Enter the common variations listed in this article and once you have the email format for the company you can quickly unlock their co-workers.
One that has worked for me - if they have a personal website, check the domain registry using a service such as http://whois.com, and if not a private registration, you will see the registrant's email :)
Apparently everything is a hack, and anything can be hacked. Hack your life, hack weight loss, hack cooking. It's ridiculous; I'm glad I never really used the words hacker or hack, as they seem to have lost all semblance of meaning in the last year or so.
[+] [-] Roedou|13 years ago|reply
which others have taken and improved in creative ways.
This was one of my favorite versions, which checks against Gravatar: http://linksy.me/find-email
[+] [-] allforJesse|13 years ago|reply
http://metricsparrow.com/toolkit/email-permutator/
[+] [-] walls|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|13 years ago|reply
And it's a shame, because all this stuff about spam is very old. We don't need to learn these lessons again.
Ask people to give you their email addresses, and ask if it's okay for you to send them stuff. Confirm that email address. Include an opt out with every email.
[+] [-] larrys|13 years ago|reply
More importantly the issue here is the way the post says "a large email campaign". What is defined as "large"?
I don't think taking the time to compile 200 email addresses and send a personal email really is to big of a problem if you've taken the time to go to the effort of doing what the OP is saying (in other words you didn't just buy a list of names). On the other hand if you've gotten mechanical turks and mined 20,000 emails maybe it is.
I don't think (despite the definition) that "spam" is anything unsolicited anymore than calling someone by phone to try to get them to buy something is automatically the same as robo calling or cubicle calling.
[+] [-] kunle|13 years ago|reply
Caveat - its probably a bit spammy but the folks I learned this from have to my knowledge never been banned. Use at your own peril.
[+] [-] duncanmcdowell|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ktsmith|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twistedpair|13 years ago|reply
Relief is at hand! Find their LLC, knowing the state helps, but Google can figure that out. Now go to that State's Secretary of State site. Most will let you look up filings for all LLC's and corps. Now you've got the owner's mailing address (probably his/her home) and phone as well as the information for all other officers. Ring them up. You'll be amazed how helpful they'll be now.
[+] [-] leeoniya|13 years ago|reply
ironically, [email protected] will never reach a person actually named john doe.
i remember http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol which was open for business on many servers in the 90s, could get a person's info by their email, etc.
[+] [-] hluska|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] w1ntermute|13 years ago|reply
This is something I do all the time. I've guessed the emails of some pretty high-up people who were clearly quite surprised to get an email from a stranger when they've never published their email address anywhere on the public web.
[+] [-] Asseta|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dlagillespie|13 years ago|reply
Prime example http://www.whois.com/whois/500hats.com
[+] [-] tuananh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] auctiontheory|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] breakupapp|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] winter_blue|13 years ago|reply
For instance, just look at the history of the chromium project. You'll see lots of email addresses ending in @google.com
[+] [-] 1337biz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anxx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdcravens|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimlast|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lurkinggrue|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OGC|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] obviouslygreen|13 years ago|reply