MainSleaze

An organization that calls itself “AAA ClubDeal,” and that claims to represent AAA Southern New England, just sent a bulk email to an email address that, as best I can tell, never existed. For readers from outside of the United States, “AAA” is the American Automobile Association, a longstanding advocacy group for automobile owners and drivers that also sells insurance and runs a large travel agency. The ESP is ExactTarget.

I had some doubts about the actual identity of this sender, so I looked up the domain memberclubdeal.com in Whois to see who owns it. The actual sender was not AAA Southern New England, but neoSaej Corporation, a Bedford, Massachusetts-based marketer. AAA Southern New England presumably hired neoSaej to handle marketing for their travel agency division.

Normally a marketer owns and manages the list that it markets to for a customer, although it receives at least some email addresses from its client, such as customer email addresses. It adds to the list in various ways, by soliciting subscriptions to web sites and offering incentives to users who subscribe. A legitimate marketer normally uses proper opt-in methods and does not send spam. Unfortunately many marketers are careless or deliberately engage in practices such as list purchases, email append, and the like, which are opt-out and result in sending spam.

In this case, neoSaej Corporation rather than AAA Southern New England is probably the source of the spamtrap, although I cannot be certain of this. In either case, however, both of these organizations bear responsibility for the spam that was sent. neoSaej Corporation is a professional marketer that manages bulk email lists. It was hired for its expertise in bulk email. It should NOT be sending bulk email to a spamtrap! Companies are also responsible for the actions of their agents. AAA Southern New England is responsible for the spam sent by its agent neoSaej corporation. AAA Southern New England needs to take the appropriate action to stop the spam.

Sending IP: 68.232.197.244

Spam Sample:

Actual Headers:

Received: from mta.email.memberclubdeal.com (mta.email.memberclubdeal.com [68.232.197.244])
        by <xxx> with ESMTP id <xxx>; 24 Jun 2012 09:xx:xx -0000
DKIM-Signature: <xxx>
DomainKey-Signature: <xxx>
Received: by mta.email.memberclubdeal.com (PowerMTA(TM) v3.5r15) id <xxx> 
        for <xxx>; Sun, 24 Jun 2012 03:xx:xx -0600 
        (envelope-from <bounce-<xxx>@bounce.email.memberclubdeal.com>)
From: "AAA ClubDeal" <email@email.memberclubdeal.com>
To: <xxx>
Subject: Up to $300 Off Celebrity Cruise to Bermuda | Plus More ClubDeals!
Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2012 03:xx:xx -0600
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:leave-<xxx>@leave.email.memberclubdeal.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Reply-To: "AAA Club Deal" <reply-<xxx>@email.memberclubdeal.com>
x-job: <xxx>
Message-ID: <xxx>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
        boundary="<xxx>"

Readable Email:

From: AAA ClubDeal <email@email.memberclubdeal.com>
To: <spamtrap>
Subject: Up to $300 Off Celebrity Cruise to Bermuda | Plus More ClubDeals!
Reply-To: AAA Club Deal <reply-<xxx>@email.memberclubdeal.com>

<removed>

————————————————————-
Bermuda Cruise – SAVE Up to $300 Per Person!
Celebrity Cruises

>From $1,298 for Two

http://click.email.memberclubdeal.com/?<xxx>

<removed>

This email was sent to:<xxx>
This email was sent by: AAA Southern New England
110 Royal Little Drive Providence, RI 02904 USA

We respect your right to privacy – view our policy.
http://click.email.memberclubdeal.com/?<xxx>

Please do not reply to this automated e-mail.

AAA ClubDeal is currently in Beta, if you would not like to be included in our Beta testing you may unsubscribe here.
http://click.email.memberclubdeal.com/?<xxx>