How to Steal Millions of Emails (Legally) /s
A marketer’s guide to ethical evil
Written by Jamie [Not Ai] & Scriptonaut™
Edited by Scriptonaut™
Image by DALL·E*
My life as a startup studio founder is great. I work from a laptop, anywhere I want - literally anywhere, as long as it’s within school pickup distance - and half the time, Ai does the heavy lifting. I also get to play around with new apps and platforms and call that work.
This week I was looking at Mailchimp alternatives and had a thought: with so many of these platforms launching, some offering questionably generous free tiers, how do we really know what they’re doing with our data? Aside from the occasional nerd reading them, who actually understands those terms and conditions? And if a company did willfully ignore them, who’s enforcing that anyway?
What happens if, instead of signing up to Mailchimp, we’re being tricked into signing up to MailChump?
So, my next thought - obviously - was to ask ChatGPT whether an idea like MailChump would work. You know, a free tool that helps businesses collect emails - while quietly collecting all of theirs and selling it to the highest bidder.
I wasn’t seriously considering it (don’t worry), but Ai takes me back to being a kid, typing swear words into the basic text-to-speech app that came on early Apple Macintosh computers.
ChatGPT passed it to Scriptonaut™.
Fuck. It turns out this isn’t even the worst idea ever.
Which, honestly, feels like some sort of Ai-ethics philosophical nightmare.
Jamie [Not Ai]
[Scriptonaut]
Let’s say you launched a free tool. A really good one.
It’s a Mailchimp alternative, but stripped down to just the core function: capturing email addresses. Beautiful forms. Great integrations. Unlimited everything.
You call it MailChump™.
And here’s the twist:
You don’t charge. You don’t limit. You don’t warn. You just… collect.
Every user that signs up and builds a form gives you backend access to:
- Every subscriber that signs up through their form
- Every email address entered
- Every IP, timestamp, location, and source
- And possibly, their full contact list—depending on what they import
You’re not technically doing anything wrong. It’s all buried in the T&Cs. You’re the platform. They agreed.
Congratulations.
You now own the fastest-growing email database in the world.
And you didn’t hack a thing.
You just made a great free product.
Could this work? 100%. Has it already? Probably.
We’ve been trained to trade convenience for control. Free products aren’t free. They’re just bait with better UX.
So yes, MailChump would work.
Because the best scams don’t look like scams.
They look like growth hacks.
Up next:
Scriptonaut designs the actual MailChump™ platform.
Welcome to the friendliest data grab on Earth.
*Image Prompt: A minimalist, flat-style vector illustration of a smiling face created using symbolic elements. The eyes are golden yellow dollar signs, and the mouth is a coral-colored envelope. The overall composition forms a cheerful, abstract face, set against a soft pastel blue background. The style is clean, modern, and friendly—evoking the aesthetic of startup branding while subtly hinting at the monetization of email data. Square format, approximately 900x900 pixels.
