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Nina_Valtcheva5
Nina_Valtcheva5
Level 4
May 6, 2015
Question

Dealing with fake/temporary email addresses

  • May 6, 2015
  • 3 replies
  • 2663 views
I'm doing some data cleansing and one of the issues I want to deal with is records that have used a temporary or fake email address to register via our forms and are already in our database.

Ex: domains like @mailinator.com, @mytrashmail.com, @oneoffemail.com, @yopmail.com

Not sure what the best approach would be...should I delete them or just add them to a bad data list so we keep them out of our email communications?

Looking for suggestions on the best way to handle these so would be interested to see if anybody has dealt with a similar situation.


 
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3 replies

J
JeffSm6
Level 6
May 6, 2015
I would delete these, especially if you are concerned about your record count. Just to be safe, and since correct emails can be discovered, you may want to include a filter to exclude any with recent activity. If someone is engaging your content, and they have a legit phone number or other info, then there's no harm in hanging on to it for a while; but for those with bogus emails that haven't really done much (or anything recently), then toss them out. Maybe that's not best practice, so I'm curious what others have to say.
SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
May 6, 2015
I don't fully agree.  If we assume these people simply did not want to give out their real contact info but had a genuine interest in a product (i.e. they signed up to get a downloadable PDF or whatever) then they still have a Munchkin cookie on their machine.  If you ever get to know their real identity (through a true signup form or other form of lead association) won't you want to know their web history on your site?
Josh_Hill13
Josh_Hill13
Level 10
May 6, 2015
I would tend to agree with Sanford. Also, the domains you mentioned should differentiate between Personal Domains and actual "fake data" like asdf@asdf.com.

Delete the second group or at least block them from emails.
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