Israel Ministry of Tourism: What Happens When You Ignore Bounced Email, Part 2

The Israel Ministry of Tourism is sending emailed invitations to an email address that was closed in 2009, and just recently completed its timeout period and was re-enabled as a spamtrap. The ESP is Vertical Response.

In this case, I suspect that the Ministry of Tourism either contacts its list infrequently (less than once per year) or ignores bounces. Either of these practices lead, over time, to a list full of old, closed email addresses, some of which inevitably will have been turned into spamtraps.

Sending IP: 74.116.89.130

Spam Sample:

Actual Headers:

Received: from mkt23-sc.verticalresponse.com (mkt23-sc.verticalresponse.com [74.116.89.130])
        by <xxx> (Postfix) with ESMTP id <xxx>
        for <xxx>; Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:xx:xx -0600 (CST)
DKIM-Signature: <xxx>
DomainKey-Signature: <xxx>
Received: from [10.4.xx.xx] ([10.4.xx.xx:xx] helo=<xxx>.verticalresponse.com)
        by <xxx> (envelope-from <bounces-<xxx>@b.cts.vresp.com>)
        (ecelerity 3.0.28.38595 r(38597)) with ESMTP
        id <xxx>; Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:xx:xx -0800
From: "Israel Ministry of Tourism" <Israel_Ministry_of_Tourism@mail.vresp.com>
Reply-To: "Israel Ministry of Tourism" <reply-<xxx>@u.cts.vresp.com>
To: <xxx>
Subject: NRB Israel Breakfast Invitation
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:xx:xx +0000
Message-ID: <<xxx>@mail.vresp.com>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:reply-<xxx>@u.cts.vresp.com?subject=unsubscribe>
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Company_ID: <xxx>
X-vrfbldomain: fbl.p0.verticalresponse.com
X-vrpod: p0
X-CTS-Enabled: <xxx>
X-Campaign: <xxx>
X-vrrpmm: <xxx>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
    boundary="<xxx>";
    charset="UTF-8"

Readable Email:

From: Israel Ministry of Tourism <Israel_Ministry_of_Tourism@mail.vresp.com>
To: <spamtrap>
Subject: NRB Israel Breakfast Invitation
Reply-To: Israel Ministry of Tourism <reply-<xxx>@u.cts.vresp.com>

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