Dec
10

Good Sam Club: Emailing a Spamtrap? Why?

Good Sam Club, a subsidiary of outdoor equipment and supply retailer Camping World, is sending bulk emails to an email address that was closed in 2007. This email address has not received email from either Good Sam Club or Camping World since it passed its timeout period and was re-enabled as a spamtrap, almost two years ago. Nonetheless, the email asserts that the spamtrap opted in to receive emails from Good Sam Club, and offers the recipient a URL to renew his or her membership in the Good Sam Club. So how did this email address, which does not belong to a Good Sam Club member, get on Good Sam Club’s list? The ESP is Cheetahmail, a subsidiary of Experian.

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Dec
10

American Eagle Outfitters: Selling Clothes to a Spamtrap

American Eagle Outfitters, a U.S.-based clothing company, is sending advertising emails to an email address that was closed before 2008. This email address was reactivated as a spamtrap in mid-2010 after it passed its timeout period. It has not received email from this sender since that time. The ESP is Cheetahmail, a subsidiary of Experian.

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Dec
09

Honeybaked Ham: Blatant Opt-Out Spamming

Honeybaked Ham, a well-known U.S. company that sells hams and delicatessen items, is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed before 2008, stating that it will continue sending offers unless and until the owner of that email address unsubscribes. Since at least late 2009, this email address has not received email from this sender. The ESP is Yesmail, a subsidiary of InfoGroup.

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Dec
09

Westfield Hawthorn: Inviting a Dead Email Address to a Hannukah Celebration

Westfield, the UK-based owner of shopping malls that has been reported here before for sending unsolicited bulk email, is now emailing a different spamtrap, inviting it to a Hannukah celebration. As before, the ESP is Responsys.

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Dec
09

Worldhotels: Spamtraps Travel Over Christmas?

Worldhotels, a marketing portal for the hotel industry, is sending bulk email to an email address that, if it ever existed, was closed before 2009. From early 2010 through the mid-2011, the email address rejected all email with a 500-level error. In the months since it was re-enabled and turned into a spamtrap, this email address has not previously received email from this sender. The ESP is Sendgrid.

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Dec
09

Rodale Press/Men’s Health: Suddenly Spamming a Closed Email Address

Men’s Health Magazine and Books, a subsidary of Rodale Press, is suddenly sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2008, and that has not received email from Men’s Health at least since this email address completed its timeout period and was re-enabled as a spamtrap. This email address would have long since been removed from any properly-run bulk email list. Properly managed bulk email lists also don’t start suddenly emailing email addresses that they have ignored for several years. The ESP is Acxiom Digital.

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Dec
05

ColorFX: Selling Printing Services to a Spamtrap

Online printing company ColorFX is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2007. The email address belonged to a small company that has not been in business for almost five years. From mid-2008 through the end of 2009, the email address rejected all email with a 500-level error; it should have long since been removed from any properly-run bulk email list. The ESP is IContact.

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Dec
04

Just Fabulous: Stylish Shoes for a Spamtrap?

Shoe matching service Just Fabulous is sending bulk email to an email address that has never existed (a pure spamtrap). This particular spamtrap appears to have recently been added to an e-pended list; it has started to receive snowshoe and mainsleaze spam in significant quantities in the past three months, almost all of it using a first name that is a plausible deduction from the spamtrap itself. The ESP is ExactTarget.

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Dec
03

What do Sprint-Nextel and Burt’s Bees Have in Common?

Just tonight two legitimate mainstream companies — cellular telephone carrier Sprint-Nextel and cosmetics maker Burt’s Bees — both spammed a number of spamtraps. I doubt that either company is aware of it. Both companies apparently hired a third company, Freshaddress.com, that calls itself “The Email Address Experts”, to reconfirm certain email addresses for them. FreshAddress.com used the ESP Listrak to send opt-out “reconfirmation” requests to several spamtraps.

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Dec
03

Tim Burga, Ohio AFL-CIO President: Emailing a Spamtrap?

The president of the Ohio chapter of the AFL-CIO, the largest trade union in the United States, is sending “get out the vote” emails to an email address that closed before the last presidential election. Either the AFL-CIO ignored bounces from early 2008 through late 2009, is sending email to a list that has not been contacted since that period, or has purchased a list. The ESP was Salsalabs, the ESP side of liberal U.S. political activist group Wired for Change.

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