October 2017 in Spamtraps: ESPs

ESP spam seen in spamtraps, October 2017

ESP spam seen in spamtraps, October 2017

Digital Metrics got so bad, sending over 2.5 times more than the usual contestants in top three, that finally somebody else noticed it too and they had a Spamhaus SBL listing. Apparently the problem has been resolved because the listing created on Nov 3 was removed by Nov 9 and hasn’t shown up since. Digital Metrics is down three orders of magnitude in the traps now.

I figured the disparity between including or excluding a disgraced ESP in the metrics needed to be visualized. Thanks to Tinde for creating the animation. Reload the page to see it again.

The percentage of ESP sent mail vs all mail seen in the spamtraps was 1.3% (1.7% if DM was included). The amount of all mail was up 34% from last month.

Constant Contact’s perennial problem customer Advisor Perspectives has migrated over to SendGrid starting October 9. They were still mailing out of CC until the end of the month, though.

Bubbling under this month: SparkPost (only a few notches short of Bronto at 2.07%), Mapp Digital (1.8%), Epsilon (1.7%).

RATING PARTICIPANT PERCENTAGE NOTES MOST PROMINENT CUSTOMER
0 All others 38.7%
1 SendGrid 11.5% cadremploi.fr and myvirtualfleet.com (both at around 5%)
2 SalesForce Marketing Cloud 11.4% ExactTarget Kohls (8%)
3 MailChimp 8.1% (6.1% Mandrill) wadi.com (1%)
4 Experian 6.9% Walgreens (9%)
5 Mailgun 4.8% Still, the same Italian affiliate spammers (hard to estimate, a lot)
6 Oracle Marketing Cloud 4.2% Responsys, Eloqua and RightNow Nordstrom (9%)
7 Constant Contact 4% Advisor Perspectives (43%)
8 Amazon SES 3.7% duolingo.com and 7dayshop.com (both at around 3.3%)
9 IBM Marketing Cloud 2.6% Silverpop Menards (9%)
10 Bronto 2.1% dailysale@reply.bronto.com (30%)

Here’s the “relative badness” graph.

Average amount of messages per separate customer of ESP, October 2017

Average amount of messages per separate customer of ESP, October 2017

Finally, the “top spamming customers” table. I’m leaving out the “Scandinavian affiliate spammers”; it could be one or many operations, and it’s pointless since it is snowshoe spam that has no business being on an ESP anywhere.

RATING CUSTOMER ESP % OF THIS ESP % OF ALL ESP MAIL IN SPAMTRAPS
1 advisorperspectives.com SendGrid and Constant Contact 1% and 43%, respectively 1.8%
2 Zillow SparkPost 49% 1.0%
3 DICK’S Sporting Goods, Inc. Epsilon 38% 0.7%
4 dailysale@… Bronto 30% >0.6%
5 Walgreens Experian 9% 0.6%

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