Before you upload your contact list

Open the file you're about to upload. Does it contain only addresses, or also phone numbers, purchases and notes from your sales team?

A verifier doesn't need your entire customer history to check an email address. Make a smaller export with the address and a reference you can use to match the result locally. Keep the rest in your own system.

Before using any service, find out what happens to that export. Ask separately about:

• The uploaded file and the result file.
• Addresses copied into processing records, logs or caches.
• Retention periods, including failed jobs.
• What deletion removes immediately and what remains in backups.
• Whether customer data is reused, shared or used for other purposes.
• Where processing occurs and which other providers are involved.

“Deleted after processing” needs a definition. It might describe the upload without saying anything about the result or other stored copies.

For MailOK, consult the privacy policy and contact us if you need a detail that it doesn't cover. Use that policy and any applicable agreement to assess your requirements; a blog post shouldn't substitute for them.

After importing the results, remove local exports you no longer need according to your own retention rules. The copy in a downloads folder is easy to forget.