May
12

The Political Insider: Marketing Politics to a Spamtrap

The Political Insider, a newsletter about conservative U.S. political issues which appears to be produced by a marketing firm in Alexandria, Virginia, recently started appearing in my spamtrap. It is sent to an email address that was closed in 2004. The email nonetheless indicates that the email address was added to the system on May 7, 2012. The email was sent by ESP BlueHornet, a division of Digital River. URLs in the message body point to a marketing firm, Paramount Communication Group.

Read more…

May
12

TravelSmith: Outfitting the Traveling Spamtrap

TravelSmith, an online travel-related clothing and accessories retailer, has been sending bulk email advertisements for many months (since I first noticed) to an email address that been closed since 2005. The ESP is Cheetahmail, a subsidiary of Experian.

Read more…

May
09

London Theater Direct Wants an Audience

They appear to think that spamming a purchased list will provide them with one. Unfortunately, they have spammed several overworked engineers at my company, a retired nurse who lives several hundred miles north and hates to travel, and an exhausted new father in Leeds (me), along with a few actual spamtraps. If they thought that they were getting a list of London area residents, they were scammed. The ESP was IContact.

Read more…

May
07

Advanstar: When in doubt, diversify

Not that it’s very useful. Yesmail is still just as Yesmail as before.

Read more…

May
07

Whoa, Nellie! Turkish Airlines: *Flooding* my Spamtrap

This morning when I logged on and checked my spamtrap, I found over two dozen spams from Turkish Airlines, which I believe is the national airline in Turkey. Somebody — specifically, somebody responsible for Turkish Airlines Iran, if the From addresses are any clue — purchased a very dirty list. I don’t recall ever seeing spam from Turkish Airlines before, so if Turkish Airlines has no idea how this came about, I would recommend investigating the marketing department for somebody who believes in the tooth fairy, responds to 419 Advance Fee Fraud scams, and thinks that there is such a thing as an “opt-in” list for sale. The ESP is Cheetahmail, a subsidiary of Experian.

Read more…

May
01

“Conservatives United 2012”: Anonymously Spamming Rick Santorum’s List :(

An organization that calls itself “Conservatives United 2012” but that has no web site that I could find and sends email as conservativesunited2012@gmail.com instead of under a domain of its own, just started sending bulk email to an email address that was created earlier this year and subscribed only to former senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s campaign list. The email was sent by ESP BlueHornet, a division of Digital River. URLs in the message body point to email marketing firm VerveMail.

Read more…

May
01

Cellectis SA: Still spamming scientists

Cellectis SA, an old acquaintance on this site, continues to spam scientists, which is not altogether very surprising given EmailVision’s rather lackluster response the last time around. We hear there’s a new guy in town (manning abuse@, that is), so let’s see.

Read more…

May
01

Mettler Toledo: Spamming scientists

Mettler Toledo, a global provider of precision instruments and weighing equipment, wishes to reach out to scientists whose addresses they must have harvested from scientific articles available via PubMed. The ESP is Eloqua.
Read more…

Apr
29

Broderbund: Why Confirming Subscriptions is Worthwhile

Several months after I first posted about spam from Broderbund, the company is still regularly sending bulk email advertisements to the same email address as before. Careful examination of the spamtrap indicates that it was probably never a valid email address. It receives no other email except botnet and other criminal types of spam, and the logon portion of the email address shows up regularly in dictionary attacks. The ESP is ExactTarget.

Read more…

Apr
29

BigPoint: Sending Gaming Newsletters to a Spamtrap

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.

Read more…

Go back to top