MainSleaze

Transportation management consulting company Ahern & Associates, which provides expert advice on the trucking industry in the United States, is emailing weekly newsletters to several spamtraps. The ESP is Pinpointe.

As spamtrap collections go in the antispam world, mine is small to medium in size. A company that manages to hit five of my spamtraps is either both careless and unlucky in its bulk email management practices, or is emailing a purchased or email appended list. None of the spamtraps that Ahern has emailed for the past several months has ever belonged to an Ahern customer, and it is implausible that any of them ever requested email from Ahern. It is also not possible that the spamtrap to which the sample spam below was sent could have opted in in 2012, as the company that last owned that domain shut down in the early 2000s.

Pinpointe’s own policy regarding purchased lists could not be clearer. The following quote was taken from their web site this morning:

There is no such thing as a ‘purchased opt-in list.’ So if you purchased an email list of any kind, please do not upload it to Pinpointe or plan to send email to those contacts through Pinpointe, as this is a violation of our Anti-SPAM policy and you will not be eligible for a refund when your service is cancelled. (Full policy is here.)

Although the policy does not explicitly mention email appending, I can’t imagine that Pinpointe would take any kinder a view of email appended lists, given that emailing an appended list clearly constitutes emailing a list of email addresses that did not opt in to receive that email.

I look forward to Pinpointe taking action against the activities of their spamming customer.

Sending IP: 64.62.222.194 & 64.62.222.195

Spam Sample:

Actual Headers:

Received: from mta2195.pptsend03.com (mta2195.pptsend03.com [64.62.222.195])
        by <xxx> (Postfix) with ESMTP id <xxx>
        for <xxx>; Tue, 29 Jul 2014 07:##:## -0500 (CDT)
DKIM-Signature: <xxx>
Received: from <xxx>.mypinpointe.com (199.127.241.15) by mta2195.pptsend03.com id <xxx> 
        for <xxx>; Tue, 29 Jul 2014 05:##:## -0700 
        (envelope-from <bounce-<xxx>@pptsend03.com>)
Subject: Successor Planning - Pt 2
To: <xxx>
From: "Ahern & Associates Ltd." <ahern@ahern-ltd.com>
Reply-To: ahern@ahern-ltd.com
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 05:##:## -0700
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Report-Abuse: This header is here to help us track abuse. Please report abuse for this campaign here:
X-Report-Abuse: http://na04.mypinpointe.com/feedbackloop.php?<xxx>
X-Report-Abuse-LID: <xxx>
X-Report-Abuse-RecptId: <xxx>
X-Report-Abuse-SID: <xxx>
X-Report-Abuse-Sent-By: <xxx>
X-Feedback-ID: <xxx>
List-Unsubscribe: <http://na04.mypinpointe.com/unsubscribe.php?<xxx>>, <mailto:leave+?<xxx>@<xxx>.mypinpointe.com>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; charset="UTF-8"; boundary="b1_<xxx>"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Message-ID: <<xxx>@<xxx>.mypinpointe.com>

Readable Email:

From: Ahern & Associates Ltd. <ahern@ahern-ltd.com>
To: <spamtrap>
Subject: Successor Planning – Pt 2

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Last week, I discussed the challenges facing many privately owned trucking companies;

• How do you exit the business?
• How do you determine who the business should be sold to?
• How do you begin the process?

Assuming you have decided that it is time to develop an exit strategy, before you go much further, you have to determine the value of the business.

<removed>

©2012 Ahern & Associates Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
AHERN & ASSOCIATES, LTD., 2198 E. Camelback Rd., Suite 210 • Phoenix, Arizona 85016
Tel: 602-242-1030 | Fax: 602-242-4855 | www.ahern-ltd.com
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