7 comments

  • legitster 5 minutes ago
    I just did a signup on a brand new email address and was not able to recreate. No random spam emails reported.

    It's likely that the email the author received is pure coincidence. Especially if they are using a client that downloads emails in batches.

    FWIW it looks like their validation email is sent by Customer.IO via Mailgun. Both have squeaky clean service agreements so it's unlikely they are shooting off the data to spammers.

  • xp84 19 minutes ago
    Strange to see this in an apparent real product. And also I don't see how this does much to 'validate' it... It could be a valid email that belongs to a random stranger, like, tcook@apple.com for instance.

    Part of me wonders if someone has added something nefarious into their backend which just collects and exfiltrates new emails as people sign up.

  • vova_hn2 17 minutes ago
    The idea that they really send spam to validate an email address sounds to insane to be believable.

    Is it possible that they are somehow leaking the address to actual spammers?

    For example, they (or the hypothetical email validation SaaS) use an infected email validation library that ex-fills every email supplied to it, or something like this.

  • bstsb 48 minutes ago
    the actual base64 email itself is an HTML document, with a bunch of filler text about metal magnets!

    > Hi there, A magnetic domain is a region within a magnetic material in which the magnetization is in a uniform direction. This means that the individual magnetic moments of the atoms are aligned with one another and they point in the same direction [...]

    they sign off the email with a zero-width space set to "font-size: 0" for some reason

    • gus_massa 20 minutes ago
      The text is from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_domain that uses a CC BY-SA 4.0. I hope they remembered to add the atribution as requested :)
    • tom1337 45 minutes ago
      Also, the magnet text is not visible:

      style="position: absolute; left: -9999px; top:-9999px;display: none"

      maybe they try to warm up those emails to use them for other "campaigns" later on...

      • mike-cardwell 0 minutes ago
        The text is added to get around bayesian filters. The spammer doesn't want the text to be displayed to the end user though typically.
  • kirmerzlikin 17 minutes ago
    Can it be that Pangram doesn't send any spam itself but instead (intentionally or not) leaks your email address to some spammer who then does the sending?
  • jiveturkey 1 minute ago
  • aarjaneiro 12 minutes ago
    Magnetic domain