MainSleaze

HireBlast, a job information site, has been emailing job offers to one of my spamtraps for a few weeks. These emails are sent through Amazon’s Simple Email Service (Amazon SES), which functions as both an ESP and an SMTP relay service.

The spamtrap is a likely typo of a real email address. HireBlast is probably not deliberately spamming, but *is* adding email addresses to their list without first verifying that they are live and belong to the person who submitted them. If they are emailing one typoed email address, however, they are almost certainly emailing many typoed email addresses. Some of those email addresses are not spamtraps, but real email addresses that do not belong to the subscriber but to somebody else who has no interest in receiving the emails.

This problem should concern HireBlast for two reasons. First, spam (even unintentional spam) is not good for their reputation or deliverability. Second, for each typoed email address there is a real person out there who wanted their email and is not receiving it.

Sending IP: 54.240.14.42

Spam Sample:

Actual Headers:

Received: from a14-42.smtp-out.amazonses.com (a14-42.smtp-out.amazonses.com [54.240.14.42])
	by <xxx> (Postfix) with ESMTP id <xxx>
	for <xxx>; Sun,  6 Jul 2014 14:##:## +0000 (UTC)
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=simple; d=hireblast.com; h=from; q=dns;
 s=zrdk;
 b=<xxx>=
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed; d=hireblast.com; h=from; s=zr;
 bh=<xxx>=;
 b=<xxx>=
Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2014 14:##:## +0000
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset="UTF-8"
Content-Disposition: inline
Subject: =?UTF-8?B?8J+SvCBTZWFycyBIb2xkaW5ncyBoYXMgYW4gb3BlbiBwb3NpdGlvbg==?=
To: <xxx>
From: "HireBlast" <jobs@hireblast.com>
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Message-ID: <<xxx>@email.amazonses.com>
X-SES-Outgoing: 2014.07.06-<xxx>

Readable Email:

From: HireBlast <jobs@hireblast.com>
To: <spamtrap>
Subject: Sears Holdings has an open position

Your Job Alerts for Sunday, July 06, 2014
<Job type> jobs within 50 miles of <city>, <state> <zip>.

22% Backroom Associate
Sears Holdings • <CITY>, <ST>
Jobs in the category are responsible for the execution of all receiving activities including unloading merchandise, merchandise preparation and staging, outbound shipments, and daily stockroom
Posted this week on Job.com (register to apply)

<removed>

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500 E. Broward Blvd. Suite 1710 Fort Lauderdale, Fl. 33394