MainSleaze

San Francisco-based online gaming company Bigpoint sent yet another email newsletter to a spamtrap email address today to promote DarkOrbit, one of its web-based online game offerings. The email address was closed in 2005, and rejected all email until it was re-enabled in 2010 as a spamtrap. The ESP is Emailvision.

This is a one-off spamtrap hit that has been going on for months; I simply did not get around to blogging about it til now. Since Bigpoint is not hitting other spamtraps of mine, and since the domain darkorbit.com was first registered in 2004, I think that the spamtrap hit is probably due to a failure to process bounces and likely a general reluctance to prune email lists of inactive accounts rather than to deliberately spammy behavior. However, Bigpoint needs to clean up its lists and get rid of the deadweight, or it is risking having some of its “player” email addresses turn up as spamtraps at inconvenient places like reputation services or blacklists.

Sending IP: 81.92.113.124

Spam Sample:

Actual Headers:

Received: from emailer113-124.emv5.com (emailer113-124.emv5.com [81.92.113.124])
        by <xxx> (Postfix) with ESMTP id <xxx>
        for <xxx>; Sat, 28 Apr 2012 15:xx:xx <xxx>
DKIM-Signature: <xxx>
Received: by emailer113-124.emv5.com id <xxx> 
        for <xxx>; Sat, 28 Apr 2012 22:xx:xx +0200 
        (envelope-from <newsletter@news.darkorbit.com>)
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2012 22:xx:xx +0200 (CEST)
From: DarkOrbit <newsletter@news.darkorbit.com>
Reply-To: no reply <no-reply@bigpoint.com>
To: <xxx>
Message-ID: <<xxx>@news.darkorbit.com>
Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?Bonuses_for_Iron_Ore_=E2=80=93_The_Battle_for_Su?=
 =?UTF-8?Q?pplies_and_the_Iron_Ore_Marathon_rage_on!?=
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=<xxx>
X-EMV-Platform: <xxx>.campaigncommander.com$
X-EMV-CampagneId: <xxx>
X-EMV-MemberId: <xxx>
List-Unsubscribe: <http://news.darkorbit.com/HD?<xxx>>

Readable Email:

From: DarkOrbit <newsletter@news.darkorbit.com>
To: <spamtrap>
Subject: Bonuses for Iron Ore / The Battle for Supplies and the Iron Ore Marathon rage on!
Reply-To: no reply <no-reply@bigpoint.com>

The Battle for Supplies and the Ore Marathon!

Space pilot, your company desperately needs more ore. Complete 6 special quests in the Battle for Supplies starting May 1st, 2012 to secure enough essential ore. As an added bonus, there are some special items hidden in the ore deposits.

On May 4th, 2012, the drive for ore will really start to heat up in the 3 day long Ore Marathon. Get as much as you can to land a plethora of bonuses.

Sign up for the Battle of Supplies, <xxx>!

Collect Ore now!: http://www.darkorbit.com?<xxx>

Should you no longer wish to receive information about DarkOrbit, simply copy the following link into your browser address line:

http://bigpoint.com/signoff/newsletter/email/<xxx>

Bigpoint Inc., 500 Howard Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, CA 94105 / USA
http://www.bigpoint.net
CEO: Heiko Hubertz
Questions or problems? Contact Support
http://us.bigpoint.com/support/ | http://us.bigpoint.com
Telephone (no support): +1 (415) 821-8100