Boss wants to "capture" email addresses.

She thinks I can somehow get people's emails when they visit the site.

[Alligator Dream]

I hope y'all will bear with me, as I'm still an amateur. I've searched for things like "capture email" and "harvest email" but none of the topics seem to quite match what I'm dealing with:

I recently redesigned my bosses' Web site for them. My one boss, who considers herself very "techie," says that she "read somewhere" that you can "capture" a person's email address by extrapolating it from their IP address -- that you can take their IP and somehow not only get their location and ISP, but the username associated with that account at that ISP. She hopes to be able to do this so she can send a "thank you for visiting" email to everyone who visits the site (!) and so that she can add multiple addresses to her mailing list for the business.

I have delicately tried to discourage her from this line of thinking altogether, pointing out that people are getting sued for spam and sending out bulk unsolicited mail, and that your average person simply doesn't want to be emailed unless they ask to be, but I don't think she's hearing me.

I'm reasonably certain you can't do what she's thinking of anyway -- if for no other reason than the fact that AOL and other ISPs give out dynamic IP addresses -- but she's tenacious, and I guess I'd like some reassurance from those of you who've been around the block longer than I have. If she goes digging around hard enough on Google, will she find some downloadable script or software to do what she wants? She loves to order obscure programs and doodads that she thinks might help the business, and I hate the idea that I'll end up having to put some insidious harvesting code on my brand-new site that I was so proud of.

[Mardi_Gras]

Your boss is wrong. Thankfully.

[Lord Majestic]

Welcome to WebMasterWorld!

you can "capture" a person's email address by extrapolating it from their IP address

No you can't unless something fundamental changes since last time my boss asked me to answer this question ;)

[bcolflesh]

I have property in NY your boss may be interested in - historic, tons of traffic, and waterfront view.

[kevinpate]

Congrats! You now have new validation you're smarter than your boss (but you probably already knew that, didn't you?)

[Alligator Dream]

Hee. :)

That's what I figured, but I don't have a degree or anything, just wanted to make sure. Many thanks for the quick reassurances, all. I'm much relieved.

(I'm adding this to my growing collection of kooky things that get said in this office. Oh, the stories I could tell...)

[bcolflesh]

Oh, the stories I could tell...

Sounds like the makings of a good "Foo" post - go for it:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[DerekH]

Tell your boss not to believe everything she reads on the Internet!

She needs authoritative sources for her research.
We are an authoritative source.

You could argue that under the RFCs, a domain www.domain.com has to have at least the following addresses - postmaster@ and webmaster@, but....

When I browse on my firm's network PC, that IP address is shared with 3000 other people with the same base email address, so that won't work.

And when I browse at home on broadband, there's no correlation between the domain name it presents and the domain name for my email.

Your boss would be well advised to pay you for what you do, not pay you and tell you you're wrong!

<smile>
DerekH

Edited by DerekH - who'd believe a post that spells authoritative wrongly in TWO different ways in two sentences!
Corrected. I think....

[Macro]

Sure you can trap email addresses. But...

The domains on the apache DNS don't propagate an email header feedback javascript unless you have visitor trapping swf integrated with server side scripting. To do that you have to get ICANN approval before submitting it to Congress for clearance. There's a $50K fee for the submission.

Please keep us updated on her reply. And welcome to WW.

[cgrantski]

That's the best answer I've ever heard to that question.

[sonjay]

Stop being "delicate" and tell her forcefully: "Not possible."

[raptorix]

Even when it's possible to capture someones email adress, why on earth should you send an email to thank somebody? I don't like people who thank me for simple things. Like at the Mac Donalds where they say "have a nice day sir". Like they care or i die today ;)

[quiet_man]

Does your boss have pointy hair?

I wonder what the response would be at the 'plex when they keep getting her 'thank you' emails everytime Googlebot visits?

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, Alligator. Stick around and keep reading ... many people have learned enough here to be able to leave their day jobs, or at least to get a better day job with a boss who 'gets it'.

[Alligator Dream]

I'm sorely tempted to offer up Macro's delightfully "techie" response to her, but my boss often doesn't believe me when I tell her that something can't be done.

I did try to explain to her that I, as a representative of Most People, wouldn't want to get a mysterious email after visiting a site, and in fact I'd be ticked off and want to know where they got my address and who gave it to them and so forth, but again, there's a hearing problem. (Good point about the 'bots, I hadn't thought of that. I'll add it to the list of Reasons To Drop This Idea next time it comes up.)

I maintain a "delicate" approach in all of these incidents because, well, I actually enjoy my job and don't want to jeopardize it by making her feel stupid. She is the boss, after all.

Many thanks again for the validation, all. :) I will indeed read on, and hopefully learn much.

[edited by: tedster at 2:01 pm (utc) on Aug 2, 2010]
[edit reason] member's request [/edit]

[GaryK]

When my cat died my vet sent me a condolence card. It's those little touches that can make a customer/client/patient feel like some company actually cares about them. I feel the same way about your boss. Her goal is admirable. I wish more companies had people like that at the helm. IMO though you must have a pre-existing relationship with someone before sending them an e-mail otherwise it's probably going to be treated as spam and cause a negative backlash.

It's probably too late now considering what's been stated, but sometimes I try to restrict my personal comments so that I can direct someone to a thread like this and let them see firsthand what other professionals have to say. That often carries more weight than just my own opinion about something.

[Macro]

>> her goal is admirable

You are very charitable. I saw the "so that she can add multiple addresses to her mailing list for the business" and thought, "You crafty cow".

[GaryK]

Yes, I am very charitable.

It's amazing how sometimes we manage to ignore that which we don't want to see. In my case I missed the part about the mailing list. I'm not so charitable, or forgiving, when I wind up on a spammer's mailing list.

[PCInk]

Tell her you have read the contrary and will show her what you can get:

All the HTTP headers, plus the IP lookup - which will show the incorrect email address - the email addresses shown should be your email (from your computer). Physically showing her this may help.

[DerekH]

Actually, send HER an email every time *anyone* visits the website.
That'd be much easier to do, and she can see first hand what it's like...

<wink>
DerekH

[keyplyr]

You could argue that under the RFCs, a domain www.domain.com has to have at least the following addresses - postmaster@ and webmaster@

Actually, only postmaster@ is required but other agencies want abuse@ as well.

[Macro]

>> but my boss often doesn't believe me when I tell her that something can't be done.

Oh, it can be done. Doesn't anyone read anything I write? If you don't want to do it yourself our consultancy firm would be happy to help. Excluding the submission fee of $50K we'd charge only $60K leaving you paying a very reasonable 10% for our trouble. Our team of mathematicians (which I head) and our team of programmers will ensure your application is done properly. (sorry to tout for business like this but anyone else wanting to take up this offer can sticky me)

If you really don't want our services, and want to talk her out of it, how about asking her to show you one example site where it's done so you can just reproduce that?

[tgotchi]

I do not aware of any way to capture email from IP address. As far as I know, you can identify domain name from geotargeting products. This could be the closest match for your boss.

[edited by: rogerd at 9:11 pm (utc) on Jan. 20, 2005]
[edit reason] No links/URLs, please... [/edit]

[DerekH]

No, you can't deduce email address from IP address.
As I said, I've been on a large firm's network where there are 1000 different email addresses in use, one per person.
You can't tell from the outside of the firewall who is browsing what.

And though some browsers encourage you to type your email address into their preferences, there's no need to.

DerekH

[EliteWeb]

Better than capturing e-mail addresses is just spamming :D

But really, put interactive things on the site and forms to get to things that is the best you can do to capture email addresses.

[twist]

I don't have a degree or anything

Most of the time, a degree means you went to a place to learn how to be great at something from people who were so bad at it the only job they could get was a low paying job teaching others how to use it.

If you want to be a great webdeveloper don't waste your time or money on school, stay here and get advice from people who are actually successful.

As for your boss, LOL, what a moron. I worked for a guy once, had his own good sized company and thought he must be so smart even though he seemed like a moron to me. Turned out he was a moron, ran the business into the ground years later. Turned out his parents were rich and paid a lot of money to send him to a fancy school and set him up with his fancy business. The only thing most boss's are good at is bs'n you into thinking they know what their talking about.

[superbird]

Balls. If you go to college expecting to be spoonfed you are wasting time and money. It is supposed to facilitate you LEARNING, there is a difference between that and being taught. The teaching should be a very small part of it.

[Alligator Dream]

put interactive things on the site and forms to get to things that is the best you can do to capture email addresses.

I have (for now, at least) pacified her by putting a form on the site where folks can volunteer to be put on the mailing list. We've actually had several sign-ups already, so that oughta hold her for the time being.

My boss is probably a classic example of the kind of person twist is referring to. But I do hope one day to be able to afford to get some formal education in the area myself; I love the "learn by doing" approach, but I know that some schools have resources that I might not otherwise find.

Anyway. Y'all have provided me with a boatload of "techie" ammunition with which to fend off further kookiness, and again, I'm very grateful. :)

[edited by: tedster at 2:02 pm (utc) on Aug 2, 2010]
[edit reason] member request [/edit]

[moltar]

Alligator Dream: I went for ComSci degree. I haven't learned nearly as much in it as I did by myself. I have two web development courses. There I learned: how to use WYSIWYG editor, a little bit of JS, minimum CSS. It probably does not account for 1% of what I learned by myself.

The only reason I see that is good for is organizing the knowledge that you already have. I knew lots of things, including programming before I went to college, but it was all a big mess in my head. There they helped me put things in proper places.

You also might learn a lot of theory behind some algos, which might come usefull depending on what you want to do.

[Luddite]

Alligator Dream: what Moltar said.

Don't worry about your degree too much. Education is great, but a few years experience actually "doing" beats a post secondary education hands down.

[py9jmas]

HTTP does define the From: header.

The From request-header field, if given, SHOULD contain an Internet
e-mail address for the human user who controls the requesting user
agent. The address SHOULD be machine-usable, as defined by "mailbox"
in RFC 822 [9] as updated by RFC 1123 [8]:

From = "From" ":" mailbox

An example is:

From: [e-mail]

But I don't know of any mainstream browser that sends it. Some bots still do.