MainSleaze

Today vacation advertiser Vacation Myrtle Beach sent spam advertising one of their properties (“Beach Cove Resort”) to a number of spamtraps. If these spamtraps were ever live, they were closed over ten years ago. One is almost certainly a pristine spamtrap, and not one that was likely created through a typo. (The spamtrap domain belonged to an ISP.) In other words, this sender is sending to a list that might be old and very poorly maintained, but contains indications of having been purchased or email appended. The ESP is ExactTarget, a subsidiary of Salesforce.com.

All spam is annoying to the recipient. Companies that send large amounts of spam to very dirty lists, however, annoy recipients in much larger numbers and with much greater frequency. Their IPs and domains tend to get blocked locally even when they avoid the major blocklists. I searched archives for this sender, and saw regular spamtrap hits on a relatively large number of spamtraps, several of which should not have been on a list that was ever opt-in. If my personal mailserver were on its own computer, given what I saw, I would simply reject all email from these IPs and domains outright.

Sending IP: 66.231.92.234

Spam Sample:

Actual Headers:

Received: from av234.mta.exacttarget.com (av234.mta.exacttarget.com [66.231.92.234])
        by <xxx> (Postfix) with ESMTP id <xxx>
        for <xxx>; Thu,  3 Jul 2014 11:##:## -0500 (CDT)
Received: by av234.mta.exacttarget.com id <xxx> 
       for <xxx>; Thu, 3 Jul 2014 10:###:### -0600 
       (envelope-from <bounce-<xxx>@bounce.exacttarget.com>)
From: "Beach Cove Resort" <BeachCove@reply.vacationmyrtlebeach.com>
To: <xxx>
Subject: Celebrate Summer - Post 4th of July from $209
Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 10:##:## -0600
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:leave-<xxx>@leave.exacttarget.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Reply-To: "Reservation Info" <reply-<xxx>@reply.vacationmyrtlebeach.com>
x-job: <xxx>
Message-ID: <<xxx>@xtinmta105.xt.local>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
        boundary="<xxx>"

Readable Email:

From: Beach Cove Resort <BeachCove@reply.vacationmyrtlebeach.com>
To: <spamtrap>
Subject: Celebrate Summer – Post 4th of July from $209
Reply-To: Reservation Info <reply-<xxx>@reply.vacationmyrtlebeach.com>

Trouble viewing? View the web version.

http://www.beachcove.com/?<xxx>

Oceanfront 1 Bedrooms
Starting From only…
$209Per Night
Offer Valid July 9 – July 13Oceanfront 2 Bedrooms
Starting From only…
$359Per Night
Offer Valid July 9 – July 13

<removed>

If you have any questions contact our customer service representatives via email at
mailto:info@beachcove.com
info@beachcove.com ,

or call us toll free at 1-877-907-8922. If you no longer wish to receive email updates from Beach Cove Resort, you can unsubscribe from our mailing list by clicking “Unsubscribe” above.

Beach Cove Resort 4800 South Ocean Boulevard, North Myrtle Beach, SC 29582