Dec
19
Dec
16
Dollar Rent-A-Car: Hitting a Spamtrap Instead of a Real User?
U.S automobile rental business Dollar Rent-A-Car is suddenly sending bulk email to an email address that a) did not request it and b) has never existed. In this case, the likely cause is that a certain user at a large U.S. ISP *did* request this email or at least rent a car from Dollar without unchecking the “send me offers” check box on their web site, but provided a typoed email address that Dollar did not confirm before placing it on their list. In other words, these offers are going to a spamtrap *instead of* to a customer who almost certainly requested them and is likely to want them. The ESP is Responsys.
Dec
16
Bombarding Subscribers for Christmas: Toys’R’Us et al
Certain companies are absolutely desperate to sell every last possible bit of product during this holiday season. An example: U.S. toy and game retailer Toys’R’Us. Toys’R’Us is currently spamming one of my spamtraps, one that I consider highly likely to be the result of a typoed subscription and so don’t take very seriously. However, that one spamtrap receives from three to five emails per day.
Dec
14
CBS ZDNet Selects Messaging Options On Your Behalf
From someone at work, who swears “i did not check any of the boxes when i registered, and yet i got this.”
Dec
14
HP Photosharing Service Snapfish Are The Picture of Spammy, via Responsys
Received: from om-snapfish-email.rsys1.com (om-snapfish-email.rsys1.com [12.130.137.125]) by mail1.iecc.com ([64.57.183.56]) with ESMTP via TCP port 52839/25 id 528707038; 13 Dec 2012 hh:mm:ss -xxxx
rsys1.com
Dec
13
Finink.com: Selling printer inks to spamtraps / Oraakkeli.net: New Finnish B2B spammer
There’s a new player in town, Oraakkeli Oy (www, biz reg). They figure they’re doing something better than their competitors (that is, everybody in Finland spamming B2B lists completely indiscriminately) by spamming CEOs only. Their front page proudly says something about how they provide targeted B2B advertising and have a list of 35,944 CEOs from the 168,000 or so Finnish businesses in their list. The customer whose pitch they’re touting to “CEOs” is Finink.com (www, biz reg), an online retailer of printer inks.
Dec
11
Koulutuspalvelu Vaikutus: Selling education to spamtraps
Koulutuspalvelu Vaikutus (www, biz reg), who share at least one player with a spammer we already know, PowerCompetence, are spamming to sell their courses.
The ESP is NetMonitor (an unregistered d/b/a of Developer’s Helsinki Oy Ab), whose Terms of Service continue to contain nothing on spamming. NetMonitor’s ISP is Nebula, whose attitude regarding spam can only be described as being somewhere between lax and actively hostile against complainants.
Dec
11
Facediili.fi: Spamming Xmas present tips
Facediili Oy (www, biz reg) is spamming on behalf of happydealsday.com (see domain registration below; the two are owned by what amounts to the same entity). The spam has been sent to a compound file consisting of their own customer file, the Finnish Trade Register (aka the Biz Info System) and “other public registers”. This spam obviously has nothing to do with anybody’s job function.
Dec
10
eSoft – Verkkokauppa (Tmi Erno Tiepuoli): Spamming to sell electronic gadgets
eSoft Online Shop, a personal d/b/a of Erno Tiepuoli (www, biz reg) is spamming to sell electronic gadgets. The ESP is Elastic Email, whose terms of service do not allow the sending of spam, or the use of purchased lists, and specifically make reference to Spamhaus’ definition of spam. I’ve notified Elastic Email (by email to abuse@elasticemail.com) about this spammer no later than Nov 22, 2012, but haven’t heard back from them, and the spammer is still busy spamming. The address source is Eniro, which is another d/b/a of Fonecta. In other words, it’s a purchased list.
Dec
10
Promohouse Ltd, Seychelles: Spamming
This is a totally boring spammer, but it’s hitting Finnish “B2B” addresses obtained from the Business Information System, and the messages sent to Finnish spamtraps are in unusually credible Finnish for a foreign spammer. It is advertising translation services, booking assistance for hotels &c, and the provision of online shops, among other things.
It identifies itself as Promohouse Ltd. 307 Victoria House, Victoria, Mahe, Seychelles. This text is in all spams and could be used as content-based filter fodder if somebody was so inclined. Personally, I view content-based spam filters as a waste of CPU cycles and would rather see this operation bumped off the edge of the Internet…