MainSleaze

Entertainment Weekly, a widely-read U.S.-based magazine about the entertainment industry published by Time, Inc., today sent a subscription offer to what it evidently believes is a former subscriber. The email address to which it was sent has not been live for over seven years. The ESP is Acxiom Digital.

I have noticed increasing numbers of “come back” offers sent to spamtraps. Some of those offers (including this one) might have been sent to ridiculously outdated but once legitimately subscribed email addresses. Others are obvious results of email append operations. Although email append is generally considered a more egregious offense than mailing to lists that are years out of date, both practices cause spamtrap hits and can lead to listing in blacklists or poor reputation scores in reputation services.

Sending IP: 209.11.164.55

Spam Sample:

Actual Headers:

Received: from client-1-55.delivery.net (client-1-55.delivery.net [209.11.164.55])
        by <xxx> (Postfix) with ESMTP id <xxx>
        for <xxx>; Tue,  7 Aug 2012 08:xx:xx -0000 (UT)
DomainKey-Signature: <xxx>
DKIM-Signature: <xxx>
Received: from [192.168.xx.xx] ([192.168.xx.xx:xx] helo=<xxx>)
        by <xxx> (envelope-from <EntertainmentWeeklyMagazine@entertainmentweekly.delivery.net>)
        (ecelerity 3.3.2.44647 r(44647)) with ESMTP
        id <xxx>; Tue, 07 Aug 2012 01:xx:xx -0700
Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2012 01:xx:xx -0700 (PDT)
From: Entertainment Weekly Magazine <EntertainmentWeeklyMagazine@EntertainmentWeekly.delivery.net>
Reply-to: EntertainmentWeeklyMagazine@EntertainmentWeekly.delivery.net
To: <xxx>
Message-ID: <xxx>
Subject: We Want You Back
Errors-to: TimeMagazine@Time.delivery.net
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="<xxx>"
X-eid: <xxx>
X-pid: <xxx>

Readable Email:

From: Entertainment Weekly Magazine <EntertainmentWeeklyMagazine@EntertainmentWeekly.delivery.net>
To: <spamtrap>
Subject: We Want You Back
Reply-to: EntertainmentWeeklyMagazine@EntertainmentWeekly.delivery.net

To view this e-mail in your web browser, please click below.
http://time.r.delivery.net/r/c/r?<xxx>

E-MAIL OPT-OUTS
If you’d rather not receive e-mails from ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY about offers for books or magazines, click below or copy and paste this link into your browser:

[NOTE: Missing opt-out link in text-plain section, although not in HTML section. CAN-SPAM violation? Maybe.]

PRIVACY POLICY
To read our Privacy Policy click below or copy and paste this link into your browser:
http://time.r.delivery.net/r/c/r?<xxx>

For further communication, please contact:
Attention: Consumer Affairs
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY Customer Service
3000 University Center Drive
Tampa, FL 33612-6408