Apr
20

Filip Poutintsev, Spam Apologist

A recent post on LinkedIn from Finland’s finest is claiming to debunk all the arguments for why spam might be bad.

Filip, it doesn’t occur to you that the Internet community understood this to be the case long before big mail receivers and ESPs existed? You might wish to google Gary Thuerk, for example. On May 3, 1978, when he sent the first spam ever, you were all of minus nine years old, weren’t you. 🙂

So cut out the paranoia, it got old long before you had even got into the business.

Apr
09

March 2016 in Spamtraps: ESPs and Social Networks

ESP mail seen in spamtraps, March 2016

ESP mail seen in spamtraps March 2016

Coming in a little late this month. The percentage of ESP sent mail vs all mail seen in the spamtraps is only 0.6% this month; it has to do both with seeing less ESP mail (about 80% of last month’s figures), and a huge increase in botnet spam. Technically, this is a top 11 list this month because Topica and Oracle Marketing Cloud managed to match spam counts so closely that a comparison would be meaningless.

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Feb
04

January 2016 in spamtraps: Facebook

2016-01_facebook-vs-esp-big-3

What is going on? Facebook is hitting spamtraps like there’s no tomorrow. The comparison is against the total mail volume in the same spamtraps of the top three ESPs combined.

Nov
25

Thanksgiving (n.)

Thanksgiving (noun) (As applied to email deliverability)

One of “those times of the year” when mailing lists that were already mothballed are dragged out for one more blast, creating a spike in undeliverables, and of course in spamtrap hits.

Oct
03

September 2015 in spamtraps: ESPs

ESP mail seen in spamtraps in September 2015

ESP mail seen in spamtraps in September 2015

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Sep
09

August 2015 in spamtraps: ESPs

ESP mail seen in spamtraps in August 2015

ESP mail seen in spamtraps in August 2015

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Aug
25

DriveThruRPG: Legitimate Email to a Spamtrap, AND Hacked Account/Botnet Spam? :(

A customer of online roleplaying/gaming web market DriveThruRPG, Wizards of the Coast, is emailing a spamtrap in my collection. A single bulk email to a repurposed spamtrap is not in itself a huge problem, but it is a sign that a list needs attention. Since a botnet spammer has also been emailing spamtraps with forged email addresses @drivethrurpg.com, I wanted to be sure that DriveThruRPG and its ESP, MailChimp’s transactional email service Mandrill, knew that a DriveThruRPG customer also has a spamtrap on its list.

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Aug
12

Filip Poutintsev: Apparently no longer an issue

Filip Poutintsev keeps sending me private email asking me to remove all mentions of him from this blog.

That’s not going to happen, as it would be revisionist history, but I’ll say it that his ROKSO entry appears to have been dropped in early April after he had lain low for half a year. I also have no other evidence connecting him to any recent spamming. To my knowledge, he is out of the spam business.

Oh, and Filip is not Sheikh Ahmed. That’s Abdul Sattar, a real Pakistani. The two did collaborate way back when, but it eventually transpired that two distinct individuals were clearly involved.

Aug
07

July 2015 in spamtraps: ESPs

ESP mail seen in spamtraps in July 2015

ESP mail seen in spamtraps in July 2015

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Jul
16

June 2015 in spamtraps: ESPs

ESP mail seen in spamtraps in June 2015

ESP mail seen in spamtraps in June 2015

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