HN Explorer

Is it legal to send email to people who didn't finish the checkout flow?

1 points by onemiketwelve ↗ HN
I've been noticing a trend recently, where a lot of e-commerce sites require a email before calculating shipping. Sometimes I'm comparison shopping and I realized that I can get a better deal on a different storefront. But then weeks later I'll continue to get spam emails which I obviously never signed up for.

This feels very not legal

2 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 12.5 ms ] thread
allears
It's legal to send emails to anyone. However, when I get such an email, I immediately respond to it saying that I'm crossing that company off my list.
PaulHoule
Businesses in 2020 seem to almost understand the impacts of their actions. Maybe in 2030 they really will but it may be too late for some of them.

Unfortunately today some still don't understand the difference between marketing and harassment, particularly you see that with web content publishers.

In the case of email, bad practices mean that your delivery rate drops a lot. Practically email list hygiene is enforced by the "bounce rate" and not the complaint rate -- stupid spammers will spam email addresses that don't even have a "@" and they have a much worse time than others.

(I wonder, I have filters to delete mail from anyone who spams me. Could I hack my email server so these emails bounce and cause more trouble for the senders?)