Scrub email list free or pay for it shouldn’t be a question in your mind at all. Email list cleaning free, even though there are services for that out there, is a risk that will harm your inbox and deliverability scores. And not only that, if someone is actually offering to scrub your email list for free, then there must be something in the fine print because free isn’t free. This articles discusses the problems of using an email list cleaner free.

They may use your data

How important is your data to you? Or to your clients? A free scrubbing platform isn’t wasting server time and resources just because they are “good guys”. Read the fine print and see what they are going to be doing with your database. Most likely, they will be selling it, appending and emailing it. After you uploaded your data, consider it to be in the hands of 10 others in just a few short days. And those 10 others will most likely sell or trade the data as well.

They may mail to your data

A free email list cleaner will more than likely check the mx records and rarely would they do an smtp handshake. If they do, then they will be sending an advertisement to your data. That means the audience of the data is susceptible to whatever information is being sent to verify. This could offset the data which could kill the lifecycle. Every email list has a pulse. Allowing someone to send whatever they want to it lead to complaints and lack of trust.

They may sell your data

Using an email list cleaner free risks your data of getting into the hands of a spammer. Spammers regard cleaning a waste and send as much as they can per IP by purchasing small hosting servers and adding bulk email software. They send a few hundred thousand per server, burn it and move on. They could care less about deliverability or feedback loops. Your data in the hands of a spammer is exactly what to expect when using an email list cleaning free.

These are all just a simple taste of what to expect if you decide to upload your data into the wrong hands. The same can be said about companies you pay for as well. When uploading your bread and butter, make sure you have contracts in hand that specifies that the cleaner will not use it in any way. Also make sure the email hygiene company deletes the data after a certain period of time.