On the web, you can find many email address capture software. To avoid any unhealthy advertising, we will not mention the names of these products or the companies that market them in blatant disregard of the law.

For those unaware of the current legislation, these software products may seem very attractive at first glance as they easily, quickly, and inexpensively allow the creation of email address files by simply extracting addresses from websites. We draw your attention to the fact that this practice is completely illegal in France, throughout Europe, and in many other countries, and can be heavily sanctioned!

Below is an excerpt from an article published on the CNIL website, which proves the illegality of these tools. The full article can be viewed at: https://www.cnil.fr/fr/les-regles-dor-de-la-prospection-par-courrier-electronique-0 

For more information, you can also click on the following links:

https://www.cnil.fr/fr/la-prospection-commerciale-par-courrier-electronique https://www.definitions-marketing.com/definition/extraction-d-adresses-email/  https://bigbrotherawards.eu.org/article181.html https://www.journaldunet.com/expert/12298/prospection-sur-internet-quelles-regles-faut-il-respecter.shtml

Beyond purely legal aspects, using extracted addresses in email campaigns also creates serious technical problems. Indeed, it should be noted that an email campaign sent with an extracted file significantly damages the sender’s and sending server’s reputation for at least 3 reasons:

• the catastrophic number of spam complaints generated by such sends,
• the extremely high rate of NPAI (obsolete/non-existent addresses),
• the inevitable presence of spam traps.

To learn more about spam traps: What is a spamtrap?

Let’s be clear

In addition to criminal penalties, any use with OxiMailing of a file of addresses built by extraction constitutes a breach of the OxiMailing license agreement.