Chase Bank is sending advertising emails to an email address that has been closed for many years, claiming that the owner is “an Amazon.com Business Rewards Visa cardmember”. The ESP is Acxiom Digital.
Readers may notice that certain spam report blogs of mine are now appearing with the prefix (Resolved Issue): instead of the spamming company name. If you check inside these blogs, they have a notice at the top indicating that the issue is resolved, and a tag that also says “Resolved”. The blogs are still there, and still contain the same information. All the comments are preserved as well. The only changes are to the title, an additional paragraph at top, and an additional tag.
Sprint Nextel is mailing an email address that was closed in 2008, and after its timeout period was re-enabled in 2010 as a spamtrap. The ESP is Acxiom Digital. This looks like spam, but it isn’t. This is why.
Before Charles blogged about the spam he had received from Herman Cain’s campaign this morning, he emailed me and asked if political spam qualified for mention on the blog. The answer was “yes”, qualified only by the requirement that the spam be from the sender’s own IPs or sent via a legitimate ESP. On thinking about this, I realized that a public policy statement might be in order.
This blog is an experiment. A group of long-time anti-spam professionals and activists want to see whether documenting spam sent by (otherwise) legitimate companies is useful enough to be worth doing. Obviously, we hope to convince these companies and their ESPs not to send bulk email to users who did not request that email. We also hope to publicize those companies that persist in sending spam, and perhaps make that an issue for individuals and companies who might want to do business with the spamming company. Finally, we are sick and tired of seeing companies who should know better sending spam to us and to others who did not ask for it, and want to vent.
Spam sent openly by legitimate companies that use either their own IPs or a recognized legitimate ESP to send it is a tiny portion of the spam that is sent. It is a much larger portion of the spam that ends up in user inboxes, however. Blacklists are hesitant to block legitimate companies or ESPs, even when they have solid spam evidence, because those companies and ESPs also send a great deal of email that is solicited and wanted by users. Users are often unsure whether they might have asked for the spam, or simply are so sick of spam that they don’t bother to complain. So this spam is often a greater annoyance to users than much more prolific varieties of spam that almost always are blocked or sent to the user’s junk mail folder.
Fortunately, unlike other spammers, legitimate companies and ESPs usually care about their reputation. We hope that those who are spamming and are mentioned here will care enough to do something about the problem.