B2B Prospecting Spam from IBM
This week two fellow antispam activists, one of whom has been active in the field for over 20 years, reported receiving spam from the same IBM employee about the IBM Watson platform. One of the spams was sent to the business email address of the recipient. The other was sent to a pristine spamtrap that follows the formats usually used for email addresses at the company, but has never actually been used by the intended recipient. The spams were not sent through the IBM Watson Marketing Cloud (formerly SilverPop), but from its corporate mailservers.
Unfortunately IBM is not the only company that is sending this type of spam. Over the past few months, I’ve noticed a growing amount o spam sent to carefully targeted addresses prospecting for new business. This spam is not high-volume. It is sent to carefully gathered lists of email addresses and rarely hits spamtraps. It is almost never listed in reputable blocklists, and tends to show up in inboxes. It is nevertheless 100% spam, and highly *annoying* spam at that.
It is disturbing, to say the least, to see this sort of email coming from an otherwise legitimate company such as IBM. IBM needs to cut it out.
Sending IP: 129.33.205.203
Actual Headers:
Received: from e13.ny.us.ibm.com (e13.ny.us.ibm.com [129.33.205.203])
by <xxx> with ESMTP id <xxx>
(version=TLSv1.2 cipher=AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NOT)
for <xxx>; Mon, 08 May 2017 09:##:## -0400
Received: from localhost
by e13.ny.us.ibm.com with IBM ESMTP SMTP Gateway: Authorized Use Only! Violators will be prosecuted
for <xxx> from <<xxx>@us.ibm.com>;
Mon, 8 May 2017 09:##:## -0400
Received: from <xxx>.gho.pok.ibm.com (9.57.##.##)
by e13.ny.us.ibm.com (146.89.104.200) with IBM ESMTP SMTP Gateway: Authorized Use Only! Violators will be prosecuted;
Mon, 8 May 2017 09:##:## -0400
Received: from <xxx>.gho.pok.ibm.com (<xxx>.gho.pok.ibm.com [9.57.##.##])
by <xxx>.gho.pok.ibm.com (8.14.9/8.14.9/NCO v10.0) with ESMTP id <xxx>
for <xxx>; Mon, 8 May 2017 13:##:## GMT
Received: from <xxx>.gho.pok.ibm.com (unknown [127.0.0.1])
by IMSVA (Postfix) with ESMTP id <xxx>
for <xxx>; Mon, 8 May 2017 09:##:## -0400 (EDT)
Received: from <xxx>.co.us.ibm.com (unknown [9.17.##.##])
by <xxx>.gho.pok.ibm.com (Postfix) with ESMTPS id <xxx>
for <xxx>; Mon, 8 May 2017 09:##:## -0400 (EDT)
Received: from localhost
by <xxx>.co.us.ibm.com with IBM ESMTP SMTP Gateway: Authorized Use Only! Violators will be prosecuted
for <xxx> from <<xxx>@us.ibm.com>;
Mon, 8 May 2017 07:##:## -0600
Received: from smtp.notes.na.collabserv.com (192.155.##.##)
by <xxx>.co.us.ibm.com (192.168.##.##) with IBM ESMTP SMTP Gateway: Authorized Use Only! Violators will be prosecuted;
(version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128)
Mon, 8 May 2017 07:##:## -0600
Received: from localhost
by smtp.notes.na.collabserv.com with smtp.notes.na.collabserv.com ESMTP
for <xxx> from <<xxx>@us.ibm.com>;
Mon, 8 May 2017 13:##:## -0000
Received: from <xxx>.a3.dal06.isc4sb.com (10.106.##.##)
by smtp.notes.na.collabserv.com (10.106.##.##) with smtp.notes.na.collabserv.com ESMTP;
Mon, 8 May 2017 13:##:## -0000
Received: from <xxx>.a3.dal06.isc4sb.com ([10.146.##.##])
by <xxx>.a3.dal06.isc4sb.com
with ESMTP id <xxx> ;
Mon, 8 May 2017 13:##:## +0000
To: "Fatima Landin-Monti" <<xxx>@us.ibm.com>
Subject: You are not alone
From: "Fatima Landin-Monti" <<xxx>@us.ibm.com>
Date: Mon, 8 May 2017 13:##:## +0000
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-KeepSent: <xxx>;
type=4; flags=0; name=$KeepSent
X-Mailer: IBM Notes Release 9.0.1EXT SHF766 December 14, 2016
X-LLNOutbound: False
X-Disclaimed: <xxx>
X-TNEFEvaluated: 1
Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="=_related <xxx>="
x-cbid: <xxx>
X-IBM-SpamModules-Scores: FL=0; FP=0; FZ=0; HX=0; KW=0; PH=0; SC=<xxx>;
ST=0; TS=0; UL=0; ISC=; MB=<xxx>
X-IBM-SpamModules-Versions: <xxx>
X-IBM-AV-DETECTION: <xxx>
X-IBM-AV-VERSION: <xxx>
x-cbparentid: <xxx>
X-IBM-AV-DETECTION: <xxx>
X-TM-AS-GCONF: <xxx>
X-IBM-SpamModules-Scores:
X-IBM-SpamModules-Versions: <xxx>
X-IBM-AV-DETECTION: <xxx>
Readable Email:
From: Fatima Landin-Monti <<xxx>@us.ibm.com>
To: <removed>
Subject: You are not alone
Hi,
just wanted to take a moment to introduce myself as your IBM Watson Data Platform Specialist and Advisor. I’d like to discuss your 2017 initiatives and how IBM can help you meet your goals regardless of the size of your company.
<removed>
Kindest regards and Happy Week!
Fatima Landin
Digital Market Executive
IBM Analytics/IBM Watson Data Platform
Phone: <xxx>
E-mail: <xxx>@us.ibm.com
My Page: http://ibm.com/myrep/<xxx>
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