Suppression list abuse is rampant

Every day I'm more and more surprised how rampant suppression list abuse is. In my recent OtherInbox post I show an example of spam received as a result of signing up for the emusic.com free download offer that I'm fairly certain was caused by suppression list abuse. Either that or their database got hacked. I'm sure the spam I received was not authorized by emusic.com.

This happens all the time - I find a new example from a company I recognize at least once a week. Any time I sign up for something I use a unique email address (been doing this for many years) and so when I receive a message I can look at the TO address to see what caused me to get it.

Suppression list abuse is easy to monitor and easy to prevent. Both the ESPC and the IAB are working on best practices documents that touch on suppression list management. I hope these will help to educate marketers about how easy it is to make sure that your customer list doesn't end up in the hands of spammers.