7 ms·

I get so much spam from this site. Nearly every day, I get 4 copies of a bunch of spam trying to sell me Shopify inventory management, Shopify store marketing,

I get so much spam from this site. Nearly every day, I get 4 copies of a bunch of spam trying to sell me Shopify inventory management, Shopify store marketing, Shopify product feed management, Shopify shipping services, etc. Why Shopify? Because there's a script tag on my sites with the word "shopify" in it. I don't run any Shopify stores. Why 4 copies of every mail? Because I have 4 sites with that tag. BuiltWith sells my contact info in their list of "Shopify websites", which these people toss into MailChimp and spam away, despite the fact that unsolicited mailings are a ToS violation there and everywhere else. I know BuiltWith is the source since one of them named their MailChimp list "BuiltWith Shopify US". It's a brilliantly simple and profitable site that I wish I had come up with, but the fact that the business model they ended up at is basically "harvested e-mail vendor for spam" kinda sucks.

0x0 11y ago
You should paste the mails into the spamcop web interface. Hopefully it'll get mailchimp to shape up; that's what I do every time (in addition to clicking the mailchimp unsubscribe form and choosing "i never signed up for this list")
- sandstrom 11y ago
  Even better, there an option "this email is spam and should be reported".
- vidarh 11y ago
  > You should paste the mails into the spamcop web interface. Hopefully it'll get mailchimp to shape up; And it's this kind of reason which is why we can't use the Spamcop blocklists: They block way too much legitimate e-mail because they regularly end up blocking service providers due to actions of a few of their customers.
forgottenacc56 11y ago
Seems I need to get into the spam business if it earns me this much dough.
fweespeech 11y ago
> In addition to the free version of the site, BuiltWith now has a SaaS-based membership model for users that want to take advantage of a number of services that the platform now provides around lead generation, sales intelligence, and market analysis. The most popular user case is a customer that uses curated data from BuiltWith as a lead list. For example, a business that has created a platform that allows businesses to send newsletters to customers may build a list of all companies in Australia using Campaign Monitor or Mailchimp to target for marketing activities. Yeah, I really wish people would stop calling "lead generation" anything other than what it is. Spam.
codexon 11y ago
Why not obfuscate your email? I don't condone spamming, but anyone that has their email in plaintext knows what to expect.
- dangrossman 11y ago
  I value being easy to contact more than having a spam-free inbox. Customer service is perhaps the top reason people give for using my products against alternatives, and is heavily correlated with someone becoming a long-term customer. I think you overestimate the amount of spam having an e-mail address on a webpage generates, too. These mails are about all I get.
  - codexon 11y ago
    You can easily obfuscate your email to web crawlers by generating the email text and link through javascript. This is what many people like Cloudflare do.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
      - codexon 11y ago
        They could but they probably don't. You could easily assemble it on hover or on click. And bait the bots by putting a hidden element above that if they are randomly activating events, then it disables your email display code. Or any number of tricks to make it impossible for any spammer to harvest your email unless they specifically target your script. WHOIS isn't meant for soliciting. I don't check it regularly, and I would be surprised if any customers contacted you that way. But that's just me.
- macNchz 11y ago
  My email is in plain text all over the internet and I get next to no spam. The worst spam I've ever dealt with was from the Princeton Review–a supposedly legitimate business–after taking an LSAT sample quiz online. They wouldn't leave me alone for years despite my best efforts.
Animats 11y ago
"BuiltWith sells my contact info in their list of "Shopify websites", which these people toss into MailChimp and spam away, despite the fact that unsolicited mailings are a ToS violation there and everywhere else." I was modded down a few months back for calling MailChimp a spamming service. Well, now we know they are. "Transactional e-mail delivery". Yeah, right.
- mfjordvald 11y ago
  I don't think even MailChimp claims to be for transactional emails as they specifically have a separate product for that called Mandrill. MailChimp is 100% intended for marketing emails. Though I'm sure they at least try to have their customers not be spammers.
  - downandout 11y ago
    Mailchimp allows direct import of email addresses, rather than requiring a new opt-in through their platform as some similar services do. Direct list import = spam = more revenue for MailChimp.
    - wukerplank 11y ago
      While this may be abused by spammers, it's also a tool for legitimate users who want to transition to MailChimp with their existing subscribers.
      - hellweaver666 11y ago
        I used to work for a company that had built up it's subscriber list over 10 years, we tried moving to a few other services but didn't get very far because they required actual physical proof that the user had opted-in to our mailing list, which we couldn't do (because nothing other than the email was ever logged). The only way to do it would have been to "resubscribe" all of the users to the new provider and hope they chose to opt in again. This likely would have lost us a significant percentage of our mailing list. There was no such requirement from Mailchimp, so you can guess who got our business.
ikeboy 11y ago
Report them to mailchimp here: http://mailchimp.com/contact/abuse/ http://mailchimp.com/contact/abuse/ I can't speak for them, but I've reported spam senders using other commercial senders and generally get an acknowledgement that it's looked into and they don't tolerate abuse.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
sspiff 11y ago
> BuiltWith sells my contact info in their list of "Shopify websites" This right here is why you should always get domain privacy.
- agopaul 11y ago
  +1 I wonder how many people just harvest whois info for email addresses
- frgewut 11y ago
  "domain privacy" is just another extortion scheme.
  - sspiff 11y ago
    Providing a filtered email address without domain privacy is another option. However, a domain needs to have a point of contact, in case of abuse or illegal activity. Domain privacy is a valid service, where the registrar serves as a proxy for you and hides your personal information from public view. While you could argue that it should be included as a default service, the pricing of domains is almost entirely arbitrary anyway.
huhtenberg 11y ago
Have you reported them to MC?
garazy 11y ago
Apologies Dan I've totally removed your website from the system - anyone can do this via http://builtwith.com/removals http://builtwith.com/removals
- aws_ls 11y ago
  Off topic: Kudos on a successful one man show! ...quite in the league of duckduckgo & SublimeText... PS: I am also trying to do that at a smaller scale/success position as of now... :-)

0x0 11y ago

You should paste the mails into the spamcop web interface. Hopefully it'll get mailchimp to shape up; that's what I do every time (in addition to clicking the mailchimp unsubscribe form and choosing "i never signed up for this list")

sandstrom 11y ago
Even better, there an option "this email is spam and should be reported".
vidarh 11y ago
> You should paste the mails into the spamcop web interface. Hopefully it'll get mailchimp to shape up; And it's this kind of reason which is why we can't use the Spamcop blocklists: They block way too much legitimate e-mail because they regularly end up blocking service providers due to actions of a few of their customers.

forgottenacc56 11y ago

Seems I need to get into the spam business if it earns me this much dough.

fweespeech 11y ago

> In addition to the free version of the site, BuiltWith now has a SaaS-based membership model for users that want to take advantage of a number of services that the platform now provides around lead generation, sales intelligence, and market analysis. The most popular user case is a customer that uses curated data from BuiltWith as a lead list. For example, a business that has created a platform that allows businesses to send newsletters to customers may build a list of all companies in Australia using Campaign Monitor or Mailchimp to target for marketing activities. Yeah, I really wish people would stop calling "lead generation" anything other than what it is. Spam.

codexon 11y ago

Why not obfuscate your email? I don't condone spamming, but anyone that has their email in plaintext knows what to expect.

dangrossman 11y ago
I value being easy to contact more than having a spam-free inbox. Customer service is perhaps the top reason people give for using my products against alternatives, and is heavily correlated with someone becoming a long-term customer. I think you overestimate the amount of spam having an e-mail address on a webpage generates, too. These mails are about all I get.
- codexon 11y ago
  You can easily obfuscate your email to web crawlers by generating the email text and link through javascript. This is what many people like Cloudflare do.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    - codexon 11y ago
      They could but they probably don't. You could easily assemble it on hover or on click. And bait the bots by putting a hidden element above that if they are randomly activating events, then it disables your email display code. Or any number of tricks to make it impossible for any spammer to harvest your email unless they specifically target your script. WHOIS isn't meant for soliciting. I don't check it regularly, and I would be surprised if any customers contacted you that way. But that's just me.
macNchz 11y ago
My email is in plain text all over the internet and I get next to no spam. The worst spam I've ever dealt with was from the Princeton Review–a supposedly legitimate business–after taking an LSAT sample quiz online. They wouldn't leave me alone for years despite my best efforts.

Animats 11y ago

"BuiltWith sells my contact info in their list of "Shopify websites", which these people toss into MailChimp and spam away, despite the fact that unsolicited mailings are a ToS violation there and everywhere else." I was modded down a few months back for calling MailChimp a spamming service. Well, now we know they are. "Transactional e-mail delivery". Yeah, right.

mfjordvald 11y ago
I don't think even MailChimp claims to be for transactional emails as they specifically have a separate product for that called Mandrill. MailChimp is 100% intended for marketing emails. Though I'm sure they at least try to have their customers not be spammers.
- downandout 11y ago
  Mailchimp allows direct import of email addresses, rather than requiring a new opt-in through their platform as some similar services do. Direct list import = spam = more revenue for MailChimp.
  - wukerplank 11y ago
    While this may be abused by spammers, it's also a tool for legitimate users who want to transition to MailChimp with their existing subscribers.
    - hellweaver666 11y ago
      I used to work for a company that had built up it's subscriber list over 10 years, we tried moving to a few other services but didn't get very far because they required actual physical proof that the user had opted-in to our mailing list, which we couldn't do (because nothing other than the email was ever logged). The only way to do it would have been to "resubscribe" all of the users to the new provider and hope they chose to opt in again. This likely would have lost us a significant percentage of our mailing list. There was no such requirement from Mailchimp, so you can guess who got our business.

ikeboy 11y ago

Report them to mailchimp here: http://mailchimp.com/contact/abuse/ http://mailchimp.com/contact/abuse/ I can't speak for them, but I've reported spam senders using other commercial senders and generally get an acknowledgement that it's looked into and they don't tolerate abuse.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

sspiff 11y ago

> BuiltWith sells my contact info in their list of "Shopify websites" This right here is why you should always get domain privacy.

agopaul 11y ago
+1 I wonder how many people just harvest whois info for email addresses
frgewut 11y ago
"domain privacy" is just another extortion scheme.
- sspiff 11y ago
  Providing a filtered email address without domain privacy is another option. However, a domain needs to have a point of contact, in case of abuse or illegal activity. Domain privacy is a valid service, where the registrar serves as a proxy for you and hides your personal information from public view. While you could argue that it should be included as a default service, the pricing of domains is almost entirely arbitrary anyway.

huhtenberg 11y ago

Have you reported them to MC?

garazy 11y ago

Apologies Dan I've totally removed your website from the system - anyone can do this via http://builtwith.com/removals http://builtwith.com/removals

aws_ls 11y ago
Off topic: Kudos on a successful one man show! ...quite in the league of duckduckgo & SublimeText... PS: I am also trying to do that at a smaller scale/success position as of now... :-)