A couple of months ago the Senate campaign of Joe Kyrillos in New Jersey began sending campaign emails to one of my spamtraps, an email address that was closed in 2004. The email nonetheless indicates that the email address was added to the system on March 30, 2012. The email was sent by ESP BlueHornet, a division of Digital River. URLs in the message body point to a marketing firm, GeniusMailer.
The Political Insider, a newsletter about conservative U.S. political issues which appears to be produced by a marketing firm in Alexandria, Virginia, recently started appearing in my spamtrap. It is sent to an email address that was closed in 2004. The email nonetheless indicates that the email address was added to the system on May 7, 2012. The email was sent by ESP BlueHornet, a division of Digital River. URLs in the message body point to a marketing firm, Paramount Communication Group.
An organization that calls itself “Conservatives United 2012” but that has no web site that I could find and sends email as conservativesunited2012@gmail.com instead of under a domain of its own, just started sending bulk email to an email address that was created earlier this year and subscribed only to former senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s campaign list. The email was sent by ESP BlueHornet, a division of Digital River. URLs in the message body point to email marketing firm VerveMail.
Vision to America, apparently a division of something calling itself “Christian Worldview Communications, LLC” (no web site found), just started sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2004. The email nonetheless indicates that the email address was added to the system on April 16, 2012. The email was sent by ESP BlueHornet, a division of Digital River. URLs in the message body point to another ESP, ResponseBeacon.
Iolo Technologies, a software company whose products optimize Microsoft Windows systems, is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2007, claiming that it subscribed to their list a couple of weeks ago. The ESP is BlueHornet, a division of Digital River.
The campaign of Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2003, asking for the support of his “fellow conservative”. The email nonetheless indicates that the email address was added to the system on January 10, 2012. The ESP is BlueHornet, a division of Digital River.
New York ski resort Hunter Mountain is sending bulk email to a long-closed email address. The email address was last “live” in 2007. The ESP is BlueHornet, a division of Digital River.
A few weeks ago I blogged about a spamtrap hit by PrintCountry, an online printer ink and printing supplies seller. PrintCountry is still sending bulk email to the same long-closed email address, and is now hitting an additional email address that as far as I know has never existed at all. The email states that both email addresses was added to the system a short time ago. This is not possible; neither email address has been live since 2006, so there was nobody who could have subscribed that email address to any list in the past few weeks.
Super Hot Casino Games, an online gambling web site, is sending bulk email to <spamtrap@spambouncer.org>. Really. 🙂 That’s the old public spam reporting address at spambouncer.org, used mostly by users of the long-unmaintained SpamBouncer spam filtering program. That email address is probably in every decent suppression list and listwashing list on the planet. Super Hot Casino Games is obviously not validating subscriptions on their web site.
The ESP is BlueHornet, a subsidiary of ESP Digital River. Has BlueHornet abandoned all sanity checking on client email lists as well?