MainSleaze

The American Kennel Club (AKC), which manages dog breed registries in the United States and provides services to breeders and dog owners, just sent a bulk email to two spamtraps urging that the alleged owners of those spamtraps sign a petition. The ESP is SilverPop.

The spamtraps are both years-old and long dead. In one case, the name by which the AKC addresses the owner of the spamtrap is plausible, but not correct. This is typical of an email appended (or epended) list. These lists are produced when a company or organization sends a list containing the names, postal addresses, and phone numbers of their members or customers to a service that then searches purchased lists and other sources of information on the internet for matches between the names on the company’s list and email addresses. The company or organization receives the list from the epending service, and then sends bulk email to those email addresses.

On most epended lists anywhere from 20-50% of the email addresses are mismatches — the email addresses do not match the people on the company or organization’s original list. However, 100% of the email sent to such lists is spam by definition because the people on the original list did not ask to receive email from the company or organization that obtains the epended list. The AKC needs to find out how they came to spam, retire the epended list, and ensure that they do not use epended or purchased lists again in the future.

Sending IP: 208.85.49.6

Spam Sample:

Actual Headers:

Received: from mail1082.akc.mkt2242.com (mail1082.akc.mkt2242.com [208.85.49.6])
        by <xxx> (Postfix) with ESMTP id 222D97C01AB
        for <xxx>; Thu, 12 Jul 2012 19:xx:xx -0000 (UT)
Received: by mail1082.akc.mkt2242.com (PowerMTA(TM) v3.5r16) id <xxx> 
        for <xxx>; Thu, 12 Jul 2012 19:xx:xx +0000 
        (envelope-from <v-<xxx>@bounce.mkt2242.com>)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2012 19:xx:xx +0000 (GMT)
From: AKC Chairman Alan Kalter <enews@akc.org>
Reply-To: communications@akc.org
To: <xxx>
Message-ID: <xxx>
Subject: The AKC's Commitment to Being the Dog's Champion
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
        boundary="<xxx>"
x-mid: <xxx>
x-job: <xxx>
x-orgId: <xxx>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:v-<xxx>@bounce.mkt2242.com?subject=Unsubscribe>

Readable Email:

From: AKC Chairman Alan Kalter <enews@akc.org>
To: <spamtrap>
Subject: The AKC’s Commitment to Being the Dog’s Champion
Reply-To: communications@akc.org

Dear <xxx>,

Join us in supporting responsible breeders and giving the American public access to acquiring happy, healthy puppies. The American Kennel Club has created the Join With the AKC to Protect Responsible Small Breeders (http://links.mkt2242.com/ctt?<xxx>) petition in response to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) new proposed regulations which would create harsh and unintended consequences for responsible small and hobby breeders in this country.

<removed>

If you have any questions or comments regarding the petition or the proposed rule change, please contact our Government Relations Department at 919-816-3720 or doglaw@akc.org.

Sincerely,

Alan Kalter
Chairman of the Board
American Kennel Club

Please use this link http://links.mkt2242.com/servlet/FTFClickServlet?<xxx> to forward this email.

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American Kennel Club | 8051 Arco Corporate Drive, Suite 100 | Raleigh, NC 27617
Government Relations Department (919) 816-3720 | doglaw@akc.org
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