Here is the basic history of email list hygiene:
1991
In the early 1990’s, only a small percentage of people gathered online to communicate, play, work and socialize. Online marketers saw an opportunity and started posting advertisements. Interference with communication became a problem with net users.
1993
Conversions
fell on forums, billboards and message boards, so marketers hired hackers to
harvest email addresses in order to send advertisements. Hackers wrote
bot/spider software to pull anything online with an @ sign into their email
sending platforms. Unsolicited bulk email was then born. In 1996, a Usenet
Group dedicated to exposing and combating spam was created (NANAE).
1994
Unsolicited
Bulk Email didn’t sound bad enough, so spam fighters used Sun Tzu (The Art of
War) to reference an enemy with something distastefully common to the public,
so they used Hormel’s SPAM® luncheon meat to reference unsolicited bulk email.
The term “Spam” was born and consumers took the bait.
1995
Spam
Fighters started sharing domains, IP’s and keywords for filtering techniques.
Despite their best efforts, spam still doubled every year and IT Administrators
were desperate for antispam tools. Spam Fighters needed funds for their own
efforts so monetization of their blacklists was spawned.
1996
Spammers
continued to hack websites eventually hacking top level domains like AOL,
Yahoo! and Hotmail. Spammers used aliases to hide from the public eye, which
made it harder for spam fighters to locate, DOX and block. Spam Fighters
resorted to hacker techniques to fight back as they saw no other option.
2000
Bulk
email software and new techniques crushed spam fighter’s efforts, so spam
fighters started blocking entire c- block ranges just to rid one spammer
(blackmail). Spammers started buying more IP’s and domains using threading and
tunneling techniques, which tricked the ISP’s once more.
2002
Because
of spam fighting efforts by blocking, DOXing, and blackmailing, spammers
decided to clean up the industry by introducing spammers as “publishers” and
advertisers as “affiliates”. Publishers would spam advertisements that the
affiliates would find or create. This made it easier to get more mail out
because it was harder to pinpoint where spam was coming from. And for show, affiliates
would shut down a publisher if they received too many complaints or hit traps.
2004
Affiliates
were now supposedly responsible for publishers’ actions. Publishers would
change business names if booted off affiliate platforms once blacklisted so no damage
was truly done. It was the perfect cover to send spam – act like there is
regulation by deflecting. Spam kept growing and spam fighters had to rethink
their strategy.
2005
TLD traps, spamcop.net (where consumers can become traps)
became popular. Complaints and traps were causing problems with inbox delivery,
.com domain prices spiked and IP’s were getting expensive/scarce, so publishers
started creating their own suppressions to remove complainers, traps,
litigators and bounces for better delivery to keep current IPs green.
2006
Suppressions removed a lot of emails so Publishers needed
more, so data brokers came into the picture. Brokers traded and harvested
targeted lists while courting large corporations for their own. Companies found
that selling their own private customer databases was really profitable.
2007
So
data surged in the industry. Personal suppressions were not enough to clean so
much data. Seeding helped list owners see how many times their data was sold or
traded and some owners added spamtraps for shady purposes.
2008
Spam
fighters created better bots to fill out form pages to monitor list owners.
There was a huge need to study and monitor spam fighters. Full time list
hygiene companies spawned as marketing lists were dirtier than ever.