---
"@context": https://schema.org
"@type": TechArticle
"@id": https://www.twilio.com/docs/sendgrid/glossary/email-harvesting#article
headline: Email harvesting
description: "*Reputation*. The process of obtaining lists of valid email addresses other than affirmative consent of the recipients for the purpose of sending bulk email."
url: https://www.twilio.com/docs/sendgrid/glossary/email-harvesting
inLanguage: en
dateModified: 2025-11-07T21:55:06.000Z
author:
  "@type": Organization
  name: Twilio Developer Education Team
publisher:
  "@type": Organization
  name: Twilio
---

# Email harvesting

*Reputation*. The process of obtaining lists of valid email addresses other than affirmative consent of the recipients for the purpose of sending bulk email.

Lists can be obtained through purchase, theft, scraping, or social engineering.

* Scraping uses bots for gathering email addresses from web pages.
* Social engineeing uses [phishing][] tactics to trick recipients into providing their email addresses.

Various national and regional regulations make computer-managed harvesting of lists email addresses, as well as selling those lists, illegal. Most service providers place email address from these lists into a [blocklist][].

The customer email addresses are valuable. Twilio takes the security of your send lists seriously.

To learn how to improve getting messages into inboxes, see [email deliverability][].

## Related entries

* [CAN-SPAM][]
* [CASL][]
* [GDPR][]

[email deliverability]: /docs/sendgrid/ui/sending-email/deliverability

[blocklist]: /docs/sendgrid/glossary/blocklist

[phishing]: /docs/sendgrid/glossary/phishing

[CAN-SPAM]: /docs/sendgrid/glossary/can-spam

[CASL]: /docs/sendgrid/glossary/casl

[GDPR]: /docs/sendgrid/glossary/gdpr