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I don't know who gives that advice, but it seems poorly thought out. Email providers already tell people sending email when an address is real or not. You cli

I don't know who gives that advice, but it seems poorly thought out. Email providers already tell people sending email when an address is real or not. You clicking the link would tell them you read your email. I'm also not sure what you're afraid of. If your account has been in existence for long enough, you already get a lot of spam. It just gets blocked or filtered. The vast majority of your emails that actually get to your inbox are from people trying to do the right thing, not people trying to screw you over.

Hnrobert42 6y ago
I think they are afraid of a phishing attack that requires a click to land a remote code exploit.
sokoloff 6y ago
> Email providers already tell people sending email when an address is real or not. I don’t think email works the way you seem to think it works.
- bcrosby95 6y ago
  Email deliverability was part of my job for around 8 years. Providers will absolutely send you a bounce message (via the return path email) if an inbox does not exist. Or even if it is full. The messaging is not standard so you have to do all sorts of special case parsing because each provider can give a different message. And ignoring these messages will hurt your ability to deliver email. So if your plan is to hide your address from people, again, I don't see the point.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    I believe there's value to marketers to know "this email address somewhat reliably hits a human's eyeballs" as evidenced by a click-to-unsubscribe or click-to-refute action as a stronger signal than "well, we didn't get a bounce". "Email providers already tell people sending email when an address is real or not." suggests a level of reliability of signal that simply doesn't exist. I have an infinite number of email addresses that you could send to, which would not give you a bounce, and none of which will reliably land in front of a human's eyeballs.
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jlokier 6y ago
> Email providers already tell people sending email when an address is real or not. You clicking the link would tell them you read your email. My bad for lack of clarity. I meant whether the address has a person reading it, making it a more valuable target, perhaps added to a commercially sold database. I don't know if or how much this happens. But it's obviously an available signal. > If your account has been in existence for long enough, you already get a lot of spam. True! I got 6000 spam a day at one point. Thankfully it went down to 1000 a day and has slowed since. > It just gets blocked or filtered. Unfortunately not so well. The vast majority is filtered, but that still leaves too much getting through (I got about 80 in the last 45 hours), and in conjunction with such a high level of false positives that good things go to the spam bucket, a problem both as a recipient and a sender. Gmail is not immune either; I often find critical false positives in my Gmail spam folder. Spam is not a solved problem, and the solutions are causing other problems. I don't have solutions, but I don't agree that it's "just" blocked or filtered. If only email was that reliable!
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Hnrobert42 6y ago

I think they are afraid of a phishing attack that requires a click to land a remote code exploit.

sokoloff 6y ago

> Email providers already tell people sending email when an address is real or not. I don’t think email works the way you seem to think it works.

bcrosby95 6y ago
Email deliverability was part of my job for around 8 years. Providers will absolutely send you a bounce message (via the return path email) if an inbox does not exist. Or even if it is full. The messaging is not standard so you have to do all sorts of special case parsing because each provider can give a different message. And ignoring these messages will hurt your ability to deliver email. So if your plan is to hide your address from people, again, I don't see the point.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  I believe there's value to marketers to know "this email address somewhat reliably hits a human's eyeballs" as evidenced by a click-to-unsubscribe or click-to-refute action as a stronger signal than "well, we didn't get a bounce". "Email providers already tell people sending email when an address is real or not." suggests a level of reliability of signal that simply doesn't exist. I have an infinite number of email addresses that you could send to, which would not give you a bounce, and none of which will reliably land in front of a human's eyeballs.
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jlokier 6y ago

> Email providers already tell people sending email when an address is real or not. You clicking the link would tell them you read your email. My bad for lack of clarity. I meant whether the address has a person reading it, making it a more valuable target, perhaps added to a commercially sold database. I don't know if or how much this happens. But it's obviously an available signal. > If your account has been in existence for long enough, you already get a lot of spam. True! I got 6000 spam a day at one point. Thankfully it went down to 1000 a day and has slowed since. > It just gets blocked or filtered. Unfortunately not so well. The vast majority is filtered, but that still leaves too much getting through (I got about 80 in the last 45 hours), and in conjunction with such a high level of false positives that good things go to the spam bucket, a problem both as a recipient and a sender. Gmail is not immune either; I often find critical false positives in my Gmail spam folder. Spam is not a solved problem, and the solutions are causing other problems. I don't have solutions, but I don't agree that it's "just" blocked or filtered. If only email was that reliable!

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