> Tired of getting spam emails from newsletters you never even signed up for? Mailscarp has you covered!

Ironic

It's literally racketeering.

Charging protection money

Maybe their masterplan is to sell beds :)

based on that website, it sounds like this whole thing is a marketing campaign for that mailscarp service. They don't actually want you to read their newsletter, they want you to go investigate and then sign up for their 'block spam' service.

Not only are they a terrible service that lies about their data scraping, their service also doesn't even work. I entered one of my random email addresses that can definitely receive email into their tryout screen and it got almost every detail wrong except for the "format" fields.

Onto the pihole blocklist it goes!

Getting their URL put onto spam blocklists sounds like an unusually counterproductive way for a 'block spam' service to market...

It appears the mailer service they use (as deduced from the email headers) has a Report Spam form here. https://elasticemail.com/report-spam

I received the same: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32605574

Anyone here with some influence over spam lists? Looks like a good entry...

What do they gain by this? Do they have any affiliate links? Adverts? Just trying to understand what their motivation behind this is.

If they are particularly unscrupulous, there is an unsubscribe link: they capture use of this link to validate emails, then aggregate and sell that information onto other spammers.

WAG: I think in general people think building any kind of email distribution list can be monetized, even if it's not being done immediately. Either sold off wholesale or directly monetized through adverts / affiliate links.

Sounds like a university freshman’s lemonade business gone wrong

They are updating their CV right now - "Posts about my business were featured on the front page of HN"

If I was the person behind this, I would be tearing. You guys are brutal

Live by the hustle, die by the hustle