Apr
25
Moritz Cadillac: I Didn’t Know Spamtraps Owned Cars….
Moritz Cadillac, an auto dealership in Arlington, Texas, is sending bulk email to an email address that closed in 2005. The ESP is ExactTarget.
Apr
25
Grupo Click: Teaching a Spamtrap How to Attract Women?
I don’t speak or read Portuguese, but it appears that Brazilian web sales portal Grupo Click na Boa is trying to sell some sort of cosmetic enhancement product to a (presumably male) spamtrap, promising that the women will flock around (him|it). In any event, Grupo Click is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2002. Since this is a single spamtrap hit, and a quick look at the Grupo Click web site shows an aggressive attempt via popup to get visitors to leave their email addresses, I suspect that Grupo Click is collecting a lot of forged, falsified, or out-of-date email addresses from that web site and failing to confirm them before it adds them to a list. The ESP is Lyris.
Apr
22
The SCOOTER Store is selling to stolen email address
A few years ago I gave a tagged email address to The Home Depot for some warranty paperwork. About a year later, that address made it into the wild. At first I thought it was the big brands as usual selling off email addresses, but then learned through the type of spam I was receiving that it was stolen. I’ve contacted The Home Depot once or twice, but haven’t received one reply. Now today, The SCOOTER Store is spamming that same tagged email address via a marketing agency called Digital Marketing Direct (domain gaigelein.in).
Apr
19
Vision to America: Sending a Political Newsletter to a Spamtrap
Vision to America, apparently a division of something calling itself “Christian Worldview Communications, LLC” (no web site found), just started sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2004. The email nonetheless indicates that the email address was added to the system on April 16, 2012. The email was sent by ESP BlueHornet, a division of Digital River. URLs in the message body point to another ESP, ResponseBeacon.
Apr
19
Merial: Selling a Flea and Tick Treatment to a Spamtrap?
Funny, I didn’t *think* this spamtrap was a dog….
Veterinary pharmaceutical company Merial just sent a bulk email advertisement for Certifect, a trademarked flea and tick treatment for dogs, to an email address that was closed several years ago. After a number of years in which this email address rejected all attempts to send email to it, it was re-enabled as a spamtrap in 2010. The ESP is Campaign Monitor through their self-service newsletter facility at CreateSend.com.
Apr
16
Advanced Automation: Advertising “MailChimp Email Summit” to a Spamtrap!
Advanced Automation, Inc., a professional services organization for the insurance industry, is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2008. This email address has not received email from Advanced Automation via any channel since being re-enabled after timeout as a spamtrap. The ESP is MailChimp, and the spammed email message advertises something it calls the “Mailchimp Email Summit”, which suggests that MailChimp is a customer or partner of Advanced Automation as well as their ESP.
Apr
11
VWR International Oy: Selling …what? to spamtraps and scientists
VWR International Oy (see biz reg), d/b/a Kebo Lab, the Finnish branch of VWR International LLC, is spamming, and doing it on their own.
Apr
11
On using purchased lists
I recently googled the words can I use a purchased email list and just had to share MailChimp‘s brilliant take on the topic. Yeah, I know it’s pretty old and predates this log by a year or three. Looking at the Finnish B2B spam my traps receive, practically all of which is sent to lists sold by the so-called reputable players Fonecta, Eniro, Asiakastieto, JM Tieto, and of course the drive-by-night yahoos such as Suomen Markkinointirekisteri Oy, Digimediatoimisto Haikuu (“Haiku”), Bisnesrekisteri.com aka Lateralus Enterprise d/b/a Tavoite Media whose primus motor objects to being named and has enlisted the help of the Data Protection Ombudsman’s office to have his name stricken from this post, and Yrityspostia.fi aka Suunnittelutoimisto Jotain… aka Janne Laitinen, I felt compelled to mention this – if only so that (at least any responsible international) ESPs reading this would know that if their Finnish customers mention any of the above in their mails, they’re using a purchased list.