Background

Do you have multiple identities online? Have you used different email addresses to get more free trials?

"Fooling" signup systems this way has been going on since the beginning of the internet. Personally, the earliest I can remember doing this is with AOL dial-up internet, but a more recent example would be Netflix.

With it's pseudonymous nature, it's difficult - if not, impossible - to identify someone's true identity on the internet.

Parked Domain Circumvention

Recently, I've noticed an influx of users signing up with accounts from "parked" domains.

With this approach, for a $10 domain name, users can keep self-issuing as many email addresses as they want, while also simply registering a new domain once their old one has been flagged across different websites. Making it impossible to ban them long-term.

Downsides in a B2B Context

While this type of behaviour is expected in a consumer space (when you're like netflix and selling to millions of contacts), It's pretty frustrating in a business-to-business scenario. When you're selling to other businesses, it's really important to know who you're dealing with, so that you can personalize your discussions with them and build a long term relationship.

With fake signup information, businesses have to deal with:

• Incorrect retention and signup data
• Poor email sender/reputation scores
• Lower quality CRM contacts
• Criminal, Abusive, and/or fraudulent users
• Increased churn as users cancel free trials for "unknown" reasons
• Reduced revenue as users can "prolong" their trials, avoiding having to pay