MainSleaze

This morning I have been looking through my spamtrap collector for mainsleaze spam to report here, to get this blog started. After listing a couple of spams, I looked at the last few spam reports. With one exception, they’re all from Cheetahmail (Experian).

So I just searched the last week’s worth of spam in my spamtrap collector for any spam from IP ranges that I know belong to CheetahMail. In addition to the four spam reports so far, in the past week one or more of my spamtraps have received the following mainsleaze spam from Cheetahmail:

• From: AT&T
  Subject: Welcome To AT&T
  (Spamtraps don’t sign up for phone service.)

• From: Barnes & Noble
  Subject: BOO! Don’t Be Scared to Save Up to 30% On Halloween Essentials!
  (Spamtraps don’t buy books.)

• From: Dr Pierre Ricaud par MailAdvantages
  Subject: -50% sur les soins best-sellers et une montre offerte
  (Spamtraps don’t use makeup.)

• From: LinkedIn
  Subject: So now you’re on LinkedIn: What’s next?
  (Spamtraps don’t look for work or use social media.)
  NOTE: Hit twenty-two spamtraps in the past week, excluding the IRS phish emails with forged LinkedIn headers which are currently spewing.

• From: MY M&M’S Brand
  Subject: 10% OFF! Special Offer from MY M&M’S
  (Spamtraps don’t eat.)

• From: TravelSmith
  Subject: Time’s Up! Fall Savings Event Ends Tonight
  (Spamtraps don’t buy clothes.)

This is nuts. A legitimate ESP will occasionally have a spamming customer. (And a legitimate company will occasionally have an old or typoed email address on its list.) But no legitimate ESP should be hitting spamtraps in these numbers. CheetahMail, what the HELL is going on here?