Verizon Wireless, one of the largest U.S. mobile phone carriers, today sent bulk email advertisements to at least a half dozen of my spamtraps. The only possible explanation that I can come up with for this number of spamtrap hits is a purchased list. The ESP is *of course* Yesmail, a subsidiary of Infogroup, which appears to specialize in bulk email for companies who don’t care whether they spam or not.
Capital One, a bank with an aggressively-advertised credit card program, just sent a bulk email advertisement to a spamtrap that has never heard from Capital One before. Worse, the email uses a name that was never associated with that email address when it was live. So how did Capital One acquire that name and email address combination? One spamtrap hit isn’t conclusive, but this smells very much like a bad e-pend to me. The ESP is Epsilon Interactive, via its subsidiary Bigfoot Interactive.
Most Holy Family Monastery, a sedevacantist Roman Catholic Benedictine monastery based in Fillmore, New York, today sent a bulk email to several spamtraps, explaining why the current Catholic Church has in their view gone astray from God’s plans and offering a package of literature and DVDs for sale. None of these spamtraps (or any other spamtraps of mine) have previously received email from this organization. The ESP is Yesmail, a subsidiary of Infogroup.
Moritz Cadillac, an auto dealership in Arlington, Texas, is sending bulk email to an email address that closed in 2005. The ESP is ExactTarget.
I don’t speak or read Portuguese, but it appears that Brazilian web sales portal Grupo Click na Boa is trying to sell some sort of cosmetic enhancement product to a (presumably male) spamtrap, promising that the women will flock around (him|it). In any event, Grupo Click is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2002. Since this is a single spamtrap hit, and a quick look at the Grupo Click web site shows an aggressive attempt via popup to get visitors to leave their email addresses, I suspect that Grupo Click is collecting a lot of forged, falsified, or out-of-date email addresses from that web site and failing to confirm them before it adds them to a list. The ESP is Lyris.
A few years ago I gave a tagged email address to The Home Depot for some warranty paperwork. About a year later, that address made it into the wild. At first I thought it was the big brands as usual selling off email addresses, but then learned through the type of spam I was receiving that it was stolen. I’ve contacted The Home Depot once or twice, but haven’t received one reply. Now today, The SCOOTER Store is spamming that same tagged email address via a marketing agency called Digital Marketing Direct (domain gaigelein.in).
Vision to America, apparently a division of something calling itself “Christian Worldview Communications, LLC” (no web site found), just started sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2004. The email nonetheless indicates that the email address was added to the system on April 16, 2012. The email was sent by ESP BlueHornet, a division of Digital River. URLs in the message body point to another ESP, ResponseBeacon.
Funny, I didn’t *think* this spamtrap was a dog….
Veterinary pharmaceutical company Merial just sent a bulk email advertisement for Certifect, a trademarked flea and tick treatment for dogs, to an email address that was closed several years ago. After a number of years in which this email address rejected all attempts to send email to it, it was re-enabled as a spamtrap in 2010. The ESP is Campaign Monitor through their self-service newsletter facility at CreateSend.com.
Advanced Automation, Inc., a professional services organization for the insurance industry, is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2008. This email address has not received email from Advanced Automation via any channel since being re-enabled after timeout as a spamtrap. The ESP is MailChimp, and the spammed email message advertises something it calls the “Mailchimp Email Summit”, which suggests that MailChimp is a customer or partner of Advanced Automation as well as their ESP.