Spam sent via our RSS feed email address
Do podcasts mean you get more spam? We wrote an article about the legality of spam - unwanted commercial email - sent to RSS feeds. And then we thought... since we generate our RSS feeds ourselves, we thought we’d produce a method to algorithmically generate email addresses in it, catch people sending us messages to those email addresses, and automatically analyse it for who sent it, who scraped our RSS feed, what they’re doing with it.
After three months, we wrote this article about our findings, highlighting some of the worse behaviour from email marketers; but this page will continue to update itself automatically every day, keeping an eye on the amount of spam we get.
Below is data on the latest emails we’ve had. At no point have we requested to be added to any mailing lists using the emails we use in our RSS feeds, and those email addresses are algorithmically generated, so everyone below is, by definition, sending us unsolicited commercial mail.
When we submit our podcast to some podcast directories, we have given them unique RSS feed URLs, which allows us to make some checks about where the data is being used.
Note: We removed all email addresses from our feeds on Oct 30 2022.
SPAM® is a trademark of Hormel Foods to describe their meat product, and we presume if we ever had contact with their lawyers, they’d be really excellent people, although we haven’t.
Emails per day
The above graph shows a significant growth in the number of emails, from May to mid-June. This might be because we give a different email address every time a scraper visits; and instead of changing the email address in their database, they merely added a new one. This goes against the principle of accuracy in privacy law in most jurisdictions.
All time top of the spammers
Since we turned on our spamtrap in May 2022, we have had the following number of emails:
bktrksmail.com: 216goodpods.com: 13
podvine.com: 6
gmail.com: 4
onpodium.co: 4
onpodium.website: 4
on-podium.com: 3
joinwisdom.app: 2
joinwisdomapp.com: 2
shibacoffee.com: 1
pickedcherries.com: 1
Your podcast has made the Goodpods Top 100 Charts!
From: Goodpods <hello@goodpods.com>
Sent: Wed, 26 Oct 2022 05:18:45 +0000 (UTC)
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 104.197.18.91
Scraped on: Tue, 25 Oct 2022 [look for hashed IP 74642932]
User agent used to scrape RSS: Goodpods/2.279
List-unsubscribe header: yes
Unsubscribe method in mail: yes
Physical postal address in mail: yes
Your podcast has made the Goodpods Top 100 Charts!
From: Goodpods <hello@goodpods.com>
Sent: Wed, 12 Oct 2022 05:19:12 +0000 (UTC)
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 104.197.18.91
Scraped on: Tue, 11 Oct 2022 [look for hashed IP 74642932]
User agent used to scrape RSS: Goodpods/2.276
List-unsubscribe header: yes
Unsubscribe method in mail: yes
Physical postal address in mail: yes
Your podcast has made the Goodpods Top 100 Charts!
From: Goodpods <hello@goodpods.com>
Sent: Wed, 28 Sep 2022 05:16:49 +0000 (UTC)
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 104.197.18.91
Scraped on: Wed, 28 Sep 2022 [look for hashed IP 74642932]
User agent used to scrape RSS: Goodpods/2.270
List-unsubscribe header: yes
Unsubscribe method in mail: yes
Physical postal address in mail: yes
Your podcast has made the Goodpods Top 100 Charts!
From: Goodpods <hello@goodpods.com>
Sent: Wed, 14 Sep 2022 05:16:12 +0000 (UTC)
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 104.197.18.91
Scraped on: Tue, 13 Sep 2022 [look for hashed IP 74642932]
User agent used to scrape RSS: Goodpods/2.268
List-unsubscribe header: yes
Unsubscribe method in mail: yes
Physical postal address in mail: yes
Actie vereist: uw mailbox staat op het punt vol te raken.
From: "admin" <info@shibacoffee.com>
Sent: Thu, 01 Sep 2022 18:49:55 +0800
Show contents
Source of email:
RSS scraped by IP: 120.29.109.65
Scraped on: Thu, 25 Aug 2022 [look for hashed IP 25f02e4c]
User agent used to scrape RSS: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/104.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
List-unsubscribe header: no
Unsubscribe method in mail: none detected
A message without any method of opting out may be illegal under point 5 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Physical postal address in mail: none detected
A message without a valid physical postal address may be illegal under point 4 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Your podcast has made the Goodpods Top 100 Charts!
From: Goodpods <hello@goodpods.com>
Sent: Wed, 31 Aug 2022 05:17:46 +0000 (UTC)
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 104.197.18.91
Scraped on: Tue, 30 Aug 2022 [look for hashed IP 74642932]
User agent used to scrape RSS: Goodpods/2.265
List-unsubscribe header: yes
Unsubscribe method in mail: yes
Physical postal address in mail: yes
Here's a Free Trial for you Amazingly Brilliant Pty Ltd
From: Jam Bautista <jamatpodmachine@gmail.com>
Sent: Wed, 24 Aug 2022 09:39:35 +0000
Sent by: Gmail/Google Workplace
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 54.254.66.234
Scraped on: Mon, 1 Aug 2022 [look for hashed IP 7f1b0db5]
User agent used to scrape RSS: rss-parser
List-unsubscribe header: no
Unsubscribe method in mail: none detected
A message without any method of opting out may be illegal under point 5 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Physical postal address in mail: none detected
A message without a valid physical postal address may be illegal under point 4 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
📊 Your weekly podcast report
From: Podvine <no-reply@podvine.com>
Sent: Mon, 22 Aug 2022 15:16:44 +0000 (UTC)
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 34.85.148.35
Scraped on: Mon, 22 Aug 2022 [look for hashed IP cc5ef99f]
User agent used to scrape RSS: PodvineBot/4.0.1 (www.podvine.com)
List-unsubscribe header: yes
Unsubscribe method in mail: yes
Physical postal address in mail: none detected
A message without a valid physical postal address may be illegal under point 4 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Your podcast has made the Goodpods Top 100 Charts!
From: Goodpods <hello@goodpods.com>
Sent: Wed, 17 Aug 2022 05:21:16 +0000 (UTC)
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 104.197.18.91
Scraped on: Tue, 16 Aug 2022 [look for hashed IP 74642932]
User agent used to scrape RSS: Goodpods/2.261
List-unsubscribe header: yes
Unsubscribe method in mail: yes
Physical postal address in mail: yes
TOP_badge_for_Podnews_podcasting_news_
From: Claire Anderson <claire@joinwisdom.app>
Sent: Thu, 11 Aug 2022 07:46:33 -0700
Sent by: Gmail/Google Workplace
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 34.220.252.51
Scraped on: Wed, 22 Jun 2022 [look for hashed IP a911f907]
User agent used to scrape RSS: ListenNotes/3.0 (id=c70675c6b3a84e26b0764575b61edb92; https://www.listennotes.com/about/)
List-unsubscribe header: no
Unsubscribe method in mail: yes
Physical postal address in mail: yes
TOP_badge_for_Podnews_podcasting_news_
From: Claire Anderson <claire@joinwisdom.app>
Sent: Tue, 9 Aug 2022 07:44:48 -0700
Sent by: Gmail/Google Workplace
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 34.220.252.51
Scraped on: Wed, 22 Jun 2022 [look for hashed IP a911f907]
User agent used to scrape RSS: ListenNotes/3.0 (id=c70675c6b3a84e26b0764575b61edb92; https://www.listennotes.com/about/)
List-unsubscribe header: no
Unsubscribe method in mail: yes
Physical postal address in mail: yes
📊 Your weekly podcast report
From: Podvine <no-reply@podvine.com>
Sent: Mon, 08 Aug 2022 13:03:08 +0000 (UTC)
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 34.150.204.174
Scraped on: Mon, 8 Aug 2022 [look for hashed IP 24508ea7]
User agent used to scrape RSS: PodvineBot/4.0.1 (www.podvine.com)
List-unsubscribe header: yes
Unsubscribe method in mail: yes
Physical postal address in mail: none detected
A message without a valid physical postal address may be illegal under point 4 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
United Bank For Africa Plc
From: Kristalina Georgieva <ebukamechi007@gmail.com>
Sent: Sun, 7 Aug 2022 11:46:11 +0100
Sent by: Gmail/Google Workplace
Show contents
Source of email:
RSS scraped by IP: 142.44.142.228
Scraped on: Fri, 22 Jul 2022 [look for hashed IP 28079fef]
User agent used to scrape RSS: podCloud/3.10.0-cd3b17d3 (Podcast app like iTunes/12.0; Reason: feed-5c49c7b6a9b497738d472a79)
List-unsubscribe header: no
Unsubscribe method in mail: none detected
A message without any method of opting out may be illegal under point 5 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Physical postal address in mail: none detected
A message without a valid physical postal address may be illegal under point 4 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Your podcast has made the Goodpods Top 100 Charts!
From: Goodpods <hello@goodpods.com>
Sent: Wed, 03 Aug 2022 05:17:36 +0000 (UTC)
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 104.197.18.91
Scraped on: Tue, 2 Aug 2022 [look for hashed IP 74642932]
User agent used to scrape RSS: Goodpods/2.256
List-unsubscribe header: yes
Unsubscribe method in mail: yes
Physical postal address in mail: yes
📊 Your weekly podcast report
From: Podvine <no-reply@podvine.com>
Sent: Mon, 01 Aug 2022 18:03:45 +0000 (UTC)
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 34.145.221.210
Scraped on: Mon, 1 Aug 2022 [look for hashed IP 29cbbd69]
User agent used to scrape RSS: PodvineBot/4.0.1 (www.podvine.com)
List-unsubscribe header: yes
Unsubscribe method in mail: yes
Physical postal address in mail: none detected
A message without a valid physical postal address may be illegal under point 4 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Podnews podcasting news//Picked Cherries
From: Lori B <lori@pickedcherries.com>
Sent: Fri, 22 Jul 2022 00:19:37 +0600
Sent by: Gmail/Google Workplace
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 44.202.47.198
Scraped on: Wed, 1 Jun 2022 [look for hashed IP 7c27a2a6]
User agent used to scrape RSS: Ruby
List-unsubscribe header: no
Unsubscribe method in mail: none detected
A message without any method of opting out may be illegal under point 5 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Physical postal address in mail: none detected
A message without a valid physical postal address may be illegal under point 4 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Your podcast has made the Goodpods Top 100 Charts!
From: Goodpods <hello@goodpods.com>
Sent: Wed, 20 Jul 2022 05:19:47 +0000 (UTC)
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 104.197.18.91
Scraped on: Tue, 19 Jul 2022 [look for hashed IP 74642932]
User agent used to scrape RSS: Goodpods/2.249
List-unsubscribe header: yes
Unsubscribe method in mail: yes
Physical postal address in mail: yes
📊 Your weekly podcast report
From: Podvine <no-reply@podvine.com>
Sent: Mon, 18 Jul 2022 11:31:43 +0000 (UTC)
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 34.145.221.210
Scraped on: Mon, 18 Jul 2022 [look for hashed IP 29cbbd69]
User agent used to scrape RSS: PodvineBot/4.0.1 (www.podvine.com)
List-unsubscribe header: no
Unsubscribe method in mail: none detected
A message without any method of opting out may be illegal under point 5 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Physical postal address in mail: none detected
A message without a valid physical postal address may be illegal under point 4 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
📊 Your weekly podcast report
From: Podvine <no-reply@podvine.com>
Sent: Mon, 11 Jul 2022 11:10:00 +0000 (UTC)
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 34.85.235.161
Scraped on: Mon, 11 Jul 2022 [look for hashed IP d7ae65b9]
User agent used to scrape RSS: PodvineBot/4.0.1 (www.podvine.com)
List-unsubscribe header: no
Unsubscribe method in mail: none detected
A message without any method of opting out may be illegal under point 5 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Physical postal address in mail: none detected
A message without a valid physical postal address may be illegal under point 4 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Your podcast has made the Goodpods Top 100 Charts!
From: Goodpods <hello@goodpods.com>
Sent: Wed, 06 Jul 2022 05:22:17 +0000 (UTC)
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 104.197.18.91
Scraped on: Tue, 5 Jul 2022 [look for hashed IP 74642932]
User agent used to scrape RSS: Goodpods/2.240
List-unsubscribe header: yes
Unsubscribe method in mail: yes
Physical postal address in mail: yes
Let us edit your podcast for $49.99 per month!
From: Pod MACHINE <jamatpodmachine@gmail.com>
Sent: Mon, 4 Jul 2022 22:20:13 +0800
Sent by: Gmail/Google Workplace
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 3.87.160.114
Scraped on: Thu, 30 Jun 2022 [look for hashed IP 9f16fe5d]
User agent used to scrape RSS: Ruby
List-unsubscribe header: no
Unsubscribe method in mail: none detected
A message without any method of opting out may be illegal under point 5 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Physical postal address in mail: none detected
A message without a valid physical postal address may be illegal under point 4 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
📊 Your weekly podcast report
From: Podvine <no-reply@podvine.com>
Sent: Mon, 04 Jul 2022 08:49:19 +0000 (UTC)
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 34.85.235.161
Scraped on: Sun, 3 Jul 2022 [look for hashed IP d7ae65b9]
User agent used to scrape RSS: PodvineBot/4.0.1 (www.podvine.com)
From the user agent and URL used, we think this is: Podvine
List-unsubscribe header: no
Unsubscribe method in mail: none detected
A message without any method of opting out may be illegal under point 5 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Physical postal address in mail: none detected
A message without a valid physical postal address may be illegal under point 4 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Re: Podnews podcasting news On Podium!
From: Gintaras Vaitkus <gintaras@on-podium.com>
Sent: Sun, 03 Jul 2022 18:39:11 +0000
Sent by: Gmail/Google Workplace
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 13.73.244.225
Scraped on: Fri, 27 May 2022 [look for hashed IP ed3653a4]
User agent used to scrape RSS: -
This company removed the useragent from their software before scraping our RSS
List-unsubscribe header: no
Unsubscribe method in mail: none detected
A message without any method of opting out may be illegal under point 5 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Physical postal address in mail: none detected
A message without a valid physical postal address may be illegal under point 4 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Re: Podnews podcasting news On Podium!
From: Gintaras Vaitkus <gintaras@on-podium.com>
Sent: Tue, 28 Jun 2022 15:49:18 +0000
Sent by: Gmail/Google Workplace
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 13.73.244.225
Scraped on: Fri, 27 May 2022 [look for hashed IP ed3653a4]
User agent used to scrape RSS: -
This company removed the useragent from their software before scraping our RSS
List-unsubscribe header: no
Unsubscribe method in mail: none detected
A message without any method of opting out may be illegal under point 5 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Physical postal address in mail: none detected
A message without a valid physical postal address may be illegal under point 4 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Re: Podnews podcasting news On Podium!
From: Gintaras Vaitkus <gintaras@onpodium.co>
Sent: Mon, 27 Jun 2022 02:50:29 +0000
Sent by: Gmail/Google Workplace
Show contents
Source of email: the <itunes:owner> <itunes:email> RSS tag
RSS scraped by IP: 13.73.244.225
Scraped on: Thu, 9 Jun 2022 [look for hashed IP ed3653a4]
User agent used to scrape RSS: -
This company removed the useragent from their software before scraping our RSS
List-unsubscribe header: no
Unsubscribe method in mail: none detected
A message without any method of opting out may be illegal under point 5 of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Physical postal address in mail: none detected
A message without a valid physical postal address may be illegal under point 4 of the CAN-SPAM Act.