IMAGINiT Technologies, a subsidiary of Rand Worldwide, is sending bulk email to a role address. This email address was used to receive email, but not to send email; it would never have subscribed to receive email from any person or company. The name in the email is not associated with this role address; it appears to have been added later, likely via an e-pending process. The ESP is Eloqua.
Long, long ago I registered an email address on the San Jose Mercury News website for some reason or other. Today, somebody called the Twin Cities Pioneer Press is sending mail to me at the address I gave only to the Mercury News. Was my email address stolen or sold? No, probably not. A quick investigation reveals that both newspapers are owned by the same company, MediaNews Group. Was it spam? Most definitely! Somebody I didn’t give my email address to (Pioneer Press) is sending me mail to an address that I gave to some other company (or in this case, sister company). It may or may not be legal, but it is most certainly a bad practice.
IWA Publishing, the publications wing of the International Water Association, is sending bulk email to an old role address that was closed in 2007. The ESP is MailChimp.
U.S. charity American Heart Association is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2008, collecting donations for its childhood obesity initiative. This is the first spam that this email address has received from the American Heart Association since it exited its timeout period in late 2009. This email address receives a great deal of spam from non-profit and political groups, an amount that has been increasing steadily over the past two years. While it is possible that a great many non-profit and political organizations are sending to fallow lists, the increase in spam sent to this email address over the past six months leads me to believe that it is probably on a “targeted” list sold to non-profit and political senders. The ESP is ExactTarget.
Exposures, a photograph-based personalized gifts seller affiliated with catalog retailer Miles Kimball, is sending bulk email to the same spamtrap as Miles Kimball and another Miles Kimball affiliate. The ESP is E-Dialog.
U.S. software maker Broderbund is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2007. The spam to this email address started up two or three weeks ago; it had not previously received email from Broderbund either directly or via an ESP since it completed its timeout period and was reactivated in 2009. The ESP is ExactTarget.
SalsaLabs, the ESP side of liberal U.S. political activist group Wired for Change, is mailing an email address that has not been live for many years (since before the 2008 presidential election), thanking it for expressing interest in Salsalabs’ services (like, *when*?) and asking for the person behind it to watch a demonstration. It appears that SalsaLabs ignored bounces to email to their own list and continues to send email for years despite not having received any responses. This is really lame, Salsalabs. A professional ESP should know better than to keep pounding email addresses that don’t respond!
Catalog retailer Miles Kimball is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2007. The name in the bulk email is female, but the email address before it was closed belonged to a man, which normally indicates an e-pended list. In addition, Miles Kimball’s web site shows “As We Change” as a preferred partner. This is the same e-pended email address that As We Change hit a few weeks ago; I blogged about that at the time. Miles Kimball appears to be sharing the same e-pended list with them. The ESP is E-Dialog.