That's a cheap form of plausible deniability, then.
That seems to be the case. But then one has to wonder why they bothered collecting the addresses in the first place. If I were running a service that most people would prefer others not know they use, and I were not verifying addresses, I would expect that very few of the addresses I'm given would be of any value. Since I haven't verified them, I can't really use them myself, and I'm not likely to find much interest if I try to sell them. So why even ask?