Feb
07
Jan
21
The incredible leakyness of commercial mailers
Here is a repost of a blog entry by CAUCE President John Levine in which he explores the murky world of stolen mailing lists, and how companies rarely acknowledge such breaches.
Jan
21
Cosmetic products for the spamtrap: Estee Lauder
I have no way to identify why any addresses would be on Estee Lauder’s list, but at the very least, it is clear that they are paying zero attention to bounces. Addresses that have spent a decade dead just shouldn’t be on anybody’s mailing list any more.
The ESP is CheetahMail, who, according to a rDNS lookup of the surrounding /24, handle bulk email for entities such as VistaPrint. The words “lossless compression” did briefly cross my mind.
Jan
09
Esquire Magazine: How did you find me?
What an exciting offer! Esquire seems like a nice magazine. Though, I have to admit, I can’t tell you the last time I’ve ever purchased or read an issue of Esquire. I’ve never subscribed to Esquire, online or offline, and I have no idea why they would be sending this to me. I am definitely not a registered subscriber nor did I opt-in to this. It smells to me as though they are obtaining addresses from a third party.
I hope their ESP, E-Dialog, will look into this. I can’t have been the only person to receive this.
Jan
04
SLP Group OSK (Cooperative) / ukko.fi: Offering billing services to spamtraps
SLP Group OSK d/b/a Ukko.fi laskutuspalvelu (www, biz reg) is advertising its billing services to spamtraps. The ESP is tiedotteenne.fi, a d/b/a of Mousewell Oy (www, biz reg), d/b/a Sörnäisten Sähköinen Suoramarkkinointi (Sörnäinen Electronic Direct Marketing), a relatively new Finnish spam op.
Jan
04
Swedish spam ESP: Mailcom / Venamail
More information at the sender’s site. Note the complete absence of anything resembling an AUP and anything that would discuss the issue of spam (from the recipient’s perspective, anyway).
Dec
11
Koulutuspalvelu Vaikutus: Selling education to spamtraps
Koulutuspalvelu Vaikutus (www, biz reg), who share at least one player with a spammer we already know, PowerCompetence, are spamming to sell their courses.
The ESP is NetMonitor (an unregistered d/b/a of Developer’s Helsinki Oy Ab), whose Terms of Service continue to contain nothing on spamming. NetMonitor’s ISP is Nebula, whose attitude regarding spam can only be described as being somewhere between lax and actively hostile against complainants.
Dec
05
SportElite Marketing Oy / Aim Higher: Spamming to solicit sponsorship from businesses for sportspeople
SportElite Marketing Oy, under the unregistered d/b/a Aim Higher (www, biz reg) is spamming to solicit sponsorship for sportspeople. Their spam service provider is the Fonecta/Ixonos collaboration, which currently means they’re experiencing serious delivery problems. Which is only appropriate given the unusually poor quality of Fonecta’s lists (even with respect to the other crap everybody else is peddling that has its origins in the Finnish Business Information System) and their utter failure to understand the problem that is spam.
Dec
01
MailerLite.fi: A Finnish branch office of a Lithuanian(?) ESP that doesn’t even observe its own AUP
Somewhat unfortunately, my traps are in receipt of spam that was sent by Webcore, aka MailerLite.fi, to a purchased list, one that contains addresses of natural persons, and outdated and erroneous personal data. So their own AUP doesn’t appear to apply to themselves, and hence is worth exactly the loo roll it was printed on.
Nov
22
FilmTown: Spamming Finnish businesses for “video rentals for Xmas”
Video Film Town Oy, d/b/a FilmTown (www, biz reg) is spamming Finnish businesses with “hints for biz Xmas presents”. Their partner in spam is Panic Marketing Oy (whose Sales Group Manager recently had a rather futile attempt at spam-apologist conversation with SendGrid…), with an address list that was purchased from Digimediatoimisto Haikuu.