What are the dangers of scraping emails and ignoring CAN-SPAM?
Matthew Whittaker
Co-founder & CTO, Suped
Published 18 Jul 2025
Updated 15 Aug 2025
10 min read
The allure of email scraping, or email harvesting, is understandable for many marketers and businesses. The idea of quickly building a massive email list without the perceived hassle of traditional opt-in methods can seem like a shortcut to rapid growth. In a competitive landscape, the temptation to use readily available email addresses from public websites, social media, or other online sources is strong. However, this seemingly efficient strategy comes with a myriad of severe risks that can undermine an entire email program, legal standing, and brand reputation.
While the immediate appeal might be a larger contact database, the long-term consequences far outweigh any short-term gains. Ignoring established regulations, such as the CAN-SPAM Act, and fundamental email deliverability best practices can lead to significant financial penalties, a tarnished sender reputation, and ultimately, an inability to reach your audience at all. It is critical to understand these dangers to avoid irreparable harm to your business.
My goal is to shed light on why email scraping is a dangerous path and how strict adherence to consent-based practices is not just a matter of compliance, but a cornerstone of successful and sustainable email marketing.
The legal landscape of email scraping
One of the most immediate and impactful dangers of email scraping is the legal ramifications, particularly regarding the CAN-SPAM Act in the United States. This law, enacted in 2003, sets the rules for commercial email and establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have businesses stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations. Simply put, it regulates unsolicited commercial emails, which scraped lists are inherently prone to generating.
The CAN-SPAM Act requires several key elements for compliance, including:
Accurate Header Information: You must not use false or misleading header information. This means the "From," "To," "Reply-To," and routing information, including the originating domain name and email address, must be accurate and identify the person or business that initiated the message.
No Deceptive Subject Lines: The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.
Clear Identification of Ads: The message must be clearly identified as an advertisement.
Physical Postal Address: The email must include your valid physical postal address.
Clear Opt-Out Mechanism: You must provide a clear and conspicuous way for recipients to opt out of receiving future emails from you. This must be a return email address or another Internet-based mechanism.
Honor Opt-Out Requests Promptly: You must honor an opt-out request within 10 business days.
Violating these provisions can lead to severe penalties. Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $53,088. This means a single scraped list used for a bulk send can quickly accumulate fines into the millions. These penalties are not just theoretical; the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) actively enforces the act, and many businesses have faced significant financial repercussions. For a detailed overview, you can refer to the FTC's CAN-SPAM compliance guide.
The true cost of non-compliance
Many businesses underestimate the financial and reputational risks associated with ignoring email marketing laws. The cost of a single campaign with scraped email addresses can bankrupt a small business due to the per-email penalties. Furthermore, legal action can damage your brand's credibility and lead to long-term trust issues with customers and partners. Beyond CAN-SPAM, other global and regional privacy regulations, such as GDPR in Europe, have even stricter consent requirements, further complicating the use of scraped data. A joint statement on data scraping and privacy emphasizes the serious concerns surrounding the collection of email addresses without consent, highlighting how this practice contributes to unwanted direct marketing and spam.Violations can result in significant legal and regulatory consequences.
Impact on sender reputation and deliverability
Beyond legal penalties, perhaps the most immediate and damaging consequence of email scraping is the severe impact on your sender reputation and email deliverability. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and anti-spam organizations like Spamhaus maintain sophisticated systems to identify and filter out unsolicited email. When you send emails to scraped lists, you are sending to recipients who have not given their explicit consent, leading to high complaint rates and low engagement, which are red flags for ISPs.
A primary tool ISPs use to detect senders using bad practices is the spam trap. These are email addresses specifically set up to catch unsolicited emails. Some are dormant addresses repurposed as traps; others are pristine addresses never published publicly but exist purely to bait spammers. Sending emails to these addresses immediately flags your sending IP or domain as a source of spam, even if you are unaware you are hitting them. We have a detailed guide on what happens when you email a spam trap, which outlines mitigation strategies.
Once identified as a spammer, your IP address or sending domain can end up on various email blocklists (also known as blacklists). These blocklists are databases of IP addresses and domains known to send spam. Mailbox providers consult these lists to decide whether to accept or reject incoming email. If your domain or IP is listed, your legitimate emails, even those sent to opted-in subscribers, will likely be rejected, sent directly to the spam folder, or suffer significant deliverability issues. This is why understanding the impact of blacklisting is crucial.
The consequences of a damaged sender reputation are far-reaching. You will see a drastic drop in inbox placement rates, meaning your emails won't reach your intended audience. This renders your email marketing efforts ineffective and wastes valuable resources. Recovering a damaged sender reputation and getting delisted from blocklists can be a long and arduous process, often taking months, and in some cases, requiring a complete change of sending infrastructure. This impacts overall email deliverability for your business.
Ethical list building
Acquiring email addresses through explicit consent methods builds a high-quality list. This includes double opt-in processes, sign-up forms, and lead magnets where users willingly provide their contact information, expecting to receive communications from you.
Engagement: Subscribers are genuinely interested, leading to higher open and click-through rates.
Deliverability: Low spam complaints and bounces result in excellent inbox placement, fostering a positive sender reputation.
Legal Compliance: You automatically comply with CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and other privacy laws, avoiding fines and legal issues.
Scraped lists
Email scraping involves using automated tools to extract email addresses from publicly available sources without the owners' permission. These lists are often filled with outdated, invalid, or spam trap addresses, as they are not curated for consent or validity.
Low engagement: Recipients have no interest, leading to high spam complaints, low opens, and minimal clicks.
Deliverability: High spam rates and hits to spam traps lead to blacklisting and emails landing in spam folders.
Legal risks: Violations of anti-spam laws result in significant fines and potential lawsuits.
The hidden costs and operational challenges
Beyond the legal and deliverability issues, using scraped email lists introduces a host of operational challenges and hidden costs that can severely impact your business. First, the quality of scraped lists is almost universally poor. They are often riddled with invalid email addresses, honeypots, and spam traps, which you cannot easily distinguish from legitimate contacts. This leads to extremely high bounce rates and low engagement metrics, skewing your analytics and making it impossible to accurately assess campaign performance.
Furthermore, the time and resources wasted on these low-quality lists are substantial. You will spend valuable marketing budget sending emails that never reach their intended recipients, or worse, land your domain on a blacklist. Your team will waste time trying to clean these lists, dealing with bounce reports, and managing customer complaints, diverting resources from more productive activities. The administrative burden and frustration associated with such lists are often overlooked when considering the initial appeal of quick list growth.
Another significant hidden cost is the potential for account suspension or termination by your Email Service Provider (ESP). Most reputable ESPs have strict anti-spam policies and terms of service that explicitly forbid the use of scraped or purchased lists. They actively monitor sending behavior and complaint rates. If your account shows signs of sending to unconsented lists, your ESP will likely suspend your service, leaving you without a platform to send even your legitimate emails. This can be a devastating blow, forcing you to find a new provider and rebuild your sending reputation from scratch. This is one of the consequences of sending emails without consent.
Ultimately, the use of scraped emails damages your brand's image and erodes customer trust. When recipients receive unsolicited emails, they often associate it with a lack of professionalism and unethical practices. This can lead to negative brand perception, reduced customer loyalty, and even public criticism. The perceived short-term gain of a larger list is quickly overshadowed by the long-term damage to your brand's integrity and ability to foster meaningful customer relationships. This is why many cold outreach best practices can be illegal spam tactics.
Poor, high likelihood of landing in spam folder or being blocklisted.
Legal Risk
Minimal, full compliance with anti-spam laws.
High, significant fines under CAN-SPAM and other regulations.
Brand Perception
Positive, builds trust and authority.
Negative, associated with spamming and unethical practices.
Safeguarding your email program
Rather than resorting to risky practices like email scraping, the most effective and sustainable strategy is to build your email list through legitimate and ethical means. This involves focusing on quality over quantity and prioritizing explicit consent. Implementing double opt-in processes, where subscribers confirm their subscription after signing up, ensures that every contact on your list genuinely wants to receive your emails. This drastically reduces spam complaints and bounce rates.
Focus on creating compelling content, offering valuable lead magnets, and designing clear, accessible sign-up forms on your website. Promote your newsletter through your social media channels and other marketing initiatives, always emphasizing the benefits of subscribing. These organic methods might take longer to grow your list, but they result in a highly engaged audience that is more likely to convert and remain loyal customers.
Consistent list hygiene is also vital. Regularly remove inactive subscribers and hard bounces from your list. This proactive approach not only keeps your deliverability rates high but also signals to ISPs that you are a responsible sender. By prioritizing consent and maintaining a healthy list, you build a robust and reliable email program that delivers long-term results without the looming threat of legal action or deliverability issues. This is key to improving your inbox placement.
Views from the trenches
Best practices
Always use a confirmed opt-in process for new subscribers to verify consent and reduce spam complaints.
Segment your email lists based on recipient interests and engagement to send more relevant content.
Regularly clean your email list to remove inactive users and hard bounces, improving deliverability.
Implement email authentication standards like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for better sender reputation.
Common pitfalls
Sending emails to lists obtained through scraping, leading to high spam complaint rates.
Ignoring unsubscribe requests or making the opt-out process difficult, violating CAN-SPAM.
Failing to monitor sender reputation or address bounce rates and spam reports promptly.
Using deceptive subject lines or sender information that misleads recipients.
Expert tips
Focus on building relationships with subscribers by providing consistent value, not just sales messages.
Analyze your email campaign metrics beyond opens and clicks, looking at complaint rates and unsubscribes.
Stay updated on email regulations and ISP requirements, as they frequently evolve.
Test email content across different clients to ensure proper rendering and avoid spam filters.
Marketer view
Marketer from Email Geeks says they ran an email campaign using scraped emails, then found their domain was blacklisted, highlighting the immediate negative consequences of this practice.
2020-05-05 - Email Geeks
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks says that such instances, where marketers inadvertently blacklist themselves, create opportunities for deliverability and compliance professionals.
2020-05-05 - Email Geeks
Protecting your email program
Email scraping and ignoring regulations like the CAN-SPAM Act represent a significant gamble for any business. The immediate perceived benefits of a large contact list are quickly overshadowed by severe legal penalties, a destroyed sender reputation, and substantial operational headaches. We have seen time and again how this practice leads to emails going to spam, domains being blocklisted (or blacklisted), and ultimately, a complete breakdown of email marketing efforts.
Engagement: Subscribers are genuinely interested, leading to higher open and click-through rates.
Deliverability: High spam rates and hits to spam traps lead to blacklisting and emails landing in spam folders.
Excellent inbox placement. Strong sender reputation.
