Capital One: Poster Boy for Poor Security and Privacy

Capital One, a large US-based bank and credit card issuer, stands out for sending by far the largest number of transactional emails containing personally identifying information (PII) to my spamtrap collection. :/ Capital One uses a number of ESPs, but its transactional emails are usually sent from Bigfoot Interactive, owned by Epsilon Interactive.

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When Users Really DO NOT Want Your Email….

As I was looking through today’s crop of ESP-sent, mostly mainsleaze spam, I kept stumbling across spam sent to some of my most amusing spamtraps. These spamtraps are not typotraps so much as obvious forgeries, the sort of thing that users type when they are asked for an email address, do not want to refuse, and yet do not want to receive email from you either. Any company might have one of these on their list, but I found several companies and a number of ESPs sending to several of these obvious forgeries. Today. In the past 24 hours.

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Target Spams Email Appended List with Data Breach Notice

U.S.-based retailer Target, which recently suffered a massive data breach, has responded to that breach by hiring an email appender to append scraped email addresses (some of them closed for over a decade) to their customer list. Target then spammed that appended list over the past few days. The ESP is Epsilon, via its subsidiary Bigfoot Interactive.

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Macy’s: A Poster Child For Perennial Spam Problems :/

Earlier this summer I noted a growing number of spamtrap hits from U.S. department store Macy’s. I was about to blog about it when Spamhaus beat me to the pitch and listed them in the SBL. As I recall, they were in and out of the SBL two or three times before the spam from them died down. Unfortunately that did not last; they are once again hitting my spamtraps. It’s just a couple now, but if the previous pattern is repeated, they are headed for more trouble with Spamhaus, Returnpath, and private blocks as well. The ESP is Epsilon, via its subsidiary Bigfoot Interactive.

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Country Inns & Suites: Offering a Spamtrap Deals on Hotel Rooms

Country Inns & Suites, part of the Carson Hotels chain, recently started sending bulk email to a spamtrap email address that has never received email before. As with yesterday’s spam report, I saw delivery attempts in my mail log and enabled the email address a few weeks ago. The ESP is Epsilon, via its subsidiary Bigfoot Interactive.

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Citibank: Sending “Thank You” Reward Emails to 8-Years-Dead Spamtrap!

U.S. banking giant Citibank yesterday sent bulk email about “thank you” rewards points to a new spamtrap that has been dead for over eight years. The email contained a name and the last four digits of a credit card number. As with previous Citibank bulk emails that I have seen and blogged about, the ESP is Epsilon Interactive via its ESP Bigfoot Interactive.

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Capital One: Offering a Credit Card to an E-Pended Spamtrap :/

Capital One, a bank with an aggressively-advertised credit card program, just sent a bulk email advertisement to a spamtrap that has never heard from Capital One before. Worse, the email uses a name that was never associated with that email address when it was live. So how did Capital One acquire that name and email address combination? One spamtrap hit isn’t conclusive, but this smells very much like a bad e-pend to me. The ESP is Epsilon Interactive, via its subsidiary Bigfoot Interactive.

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Weight Watchers: Offering Easter Recipe Tips to a Spamtrap

Weight Watchers, a decades-old U.S.-based organization that helps those who want to loose weight, just started sending bulk email newsletters to a spamtrap email address that has never heard from the organization before. The email address in question, when live, was a role address for a small company, not a personal address. The email address does not appear likely to be the result of a typo. So I am wondering how it came to be on Weight Watchers’ list? The ESP is Epsilon Interactive, via its subsidiary Bigfoot Interactive.

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Dell Computers: Spamming Yet Again :/

U.S. high tech giant Dell Computers is once again sending bulk email advertisements to an email address that didn’t ask to receive them. I am confident that this is the case because I’ve seen spam from Dell Small Business via Reed Business Systems to both personal email addresses and spamtraps for years. Since Dell *is* able to set and enforce marketing policy for its company, I must conclude that it is unwilling to rein in its spamming business unit and marketing partner. The ESP is Epsilon Interactive, via its subsidiary Bigfoot Interactive.

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Chase Bank: Including Customer Information in Marketing Email Sent to Spamtraps

Months after I first blogged about Chase Bank sending marketing emails to an email address that had been closed for many years via Acxiom Digital, and after I added a comment to that blog indicating that Chase was sending marketing emails to a different email address via Epsilon Interactive (Bigfoot Interactive), this second email address is *still* receiving the same bulk emails. Worse, they STILL contain the customer’s name and the last four digits of the customer’s credit card number, although the customer has not owned this email address for years!

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