MainSleaze

Veterans for a Strong America, a conservative U.S. political organization that campaigns for a strong national defense, is mailing an email address that has not been live since well before the 2008 presidential election. The organization appears to be using a bulk email software package that we normally associate with one of the large ESPs, but it is mailing from its own IPs at Denver, Colorado-based ForTrust, LLC. The domain veteransforastrongamerica.org is registered with GoDaddy’s Domains by Proxy, a Whois Privacy service.

NOTE: Whois Privacy services such as Domains by Proxy are generally considered a bad idea for domains that are used for mail servers. Whois Privacy Protection (or cloaked Whois) hides the identity of the domain’s owner from the public. An individual with a vanity domain might legitimately want to prevent the public from obtaining his or her real name, address, phone number, or email address, but a legitimate company or non-profit organization should have no such need. These services are understandably popular with spammers, most of whom are not legitimate companies or organizations.

Individuals, ISPs, and companies that receive email from a server that uses a Whois cloaked domain frequently conclude that the sender is a deliberate spammer and simply block them. Senders who do not want to be mistaken for spammers and blocked if they happen to email the wrong email address by mistake are well advised not to use Whois cloaking on their domains.

Sending IP: 8.28.94.148

Spam Sample:

Actual Headers:

Received: from dmta4.reply.veteransforastrongamerica.org (dmta4.reply.veteransforastrongamerica.org [8.28.94.148])
        by <xxx> (Postfix) with ESMTP id <xxx>
        for <xxx>; Thu,  3 Nov 2011 09:xx:xx -0500 (CDT)
DKIM-Signature: <xxx>
DomainKey-Signature: <xxx>
Received: from mta4.reply.veteransforastrongamerica.org (172.16.1.18) 
        by dmta4.reply.veteransforastrongamerica.org (PowerMTA(TM) v3.5r15) id <xxx> 
        for <xxx>; Thu, 3 Nov 2011 07:xx:xx -0700 
        (envelope-from <xxx>)
Received: from nm-mta3 (127.0.0.1) by mta4.reply.veteransforastrongamerica.org (PowerMTA(TM) v3.5r15) id <xxx> 
        for <xxx>; Thu, 3 Nov 2011 07:xx:xx -0700 (envelope-from <xxx>)
Message-ID: <xxx>
Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2011 14:xx:xx GMT
From: "Veterans for a Strong America" <reply@reply.veteransforastrongamerica.org>
Reply-To: reply@reply.veteransforastrongamerica.org
To: "<xxx>" <xxx>
Subject: The War on our Enemies Won't be Won by Quitting
X-Mailer: <xxx>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary

Readable Email:

From: Veterans for a Strong America <reply@reply.veteransforastrongamerica.org>
To: <spamtrap>
Subject: The War on our Enemies Won’t be Won by Quitting
Reply-To: reply@reply.veteransforastrongamerica.org

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.

<removed>

Dear Friend:

The 2011 Budget Control Act signed into law by President Obama will break the Marine Corps if the Super Committee fails in its mission to reduce the budget deficit.

According to a report by the House Armed Services Committee, the Marine Corps will lose 57,000 of its 202,000 Marines and would, “require a significant re-evaluation of the Mine Corps’ missions.

<removed>

The war on our enemies won’t be won by quittingeven if temporarily. And we certainly won’t win by hollowing out the Marine Co while they are still fighting on the battlefield.

With Confidence,

Joel Arends
Chairman, Veterans for a Strong America

P.S.: Help us start a national security and veterans’ issues dialogue with the candidates running for the Presidency. Join us srting on November 16th at 8:00 p.m. EST, for a tele-town hall with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. You must register here to be a part of the phone call.