Feb
27
Vidal Sassoon: Teaching a spamtrap how to cut hair?
The Sassoon Academy wants to sell a video of cutting-edge hair techniques to spamtraps. The ESP is ExactTarget.
Feb
27
Adobe: Advertising desktop publishing programs to spamtraps
Adobe wants to sell software to rather outdated spamtraps. The ESP is Innovyx, whose front page prominently displays their ToS.
Feb
27
ResponseWave / Seed Digital Media: Another fantastic ESP failure
Responsewave Ltd, a self-professed leading provider of hosted viral marketing and permission marketing solutions, isn’t interested in hearing from me (on a topic related to address list quality, what else).
Feb
27
Pixel Designz: Advertising Web Design Services to a Purchased List?
Pixel Designz, a custom web site design firm, is sending email advertisements to two spamtraps, neither of which has been live since before 2006. Neither spamtrap has received email from this company since exiting their timeout period and being turned into spamtraps. Since the domain pixeldesignz.com was created in 2010, neither of these email addresses could have subscribed to this company’s list when they were live. The only explanations I can come up with for this are two separate typoed email addresses (not likely) or a purchased list. The ESP is Sendgrid.
Feb
26
This Week in My MainSleaze Folder
This week I’m providing a new type of spam report. It consists of a table that lists company names, the number of spams that they have sent to my spamtrap email addresses in the previous week, and the number of spamtrap email addresses that they’ve mailed. I am including only spam that is sent to those email addresses for which I accept delivery (perhaps 5% of total delivery attempts) and am excluding spam sent to any email address at a domain that is known to belong to me.
Feb
26
Chadwicks of Boston: Selling Clothing to a Spamtrap
Mail-order women’s clothing retailer Chadwicks of Boston is sending bulk email advertisements to a spamtrap email address that was closed in 2004. The ESP is Yesmail, a subsidiary of Infogroup.
Feb
26
iolo Technologies: Selling Windows Repair Software to a Spamtrap?
Iolo Technologies, a software company whose products optimize Microsoft Windows systems, is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2007, claiming that it subscribed to their list a couple of weeks ago. The ESP is BlueHornet, a division of Digital River.
Feb
25
Mayor Mike McGinn: Promoting himself to spamtraps
The Mayor of Seattle, Mike McGinn, is mailing out to spamtraps that have been dead for ten years. The ESP is Postini.
Feb
24
Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP): Spamming scientists, outdated and erroneous addresses
SCIRP are spamming addresses obtained from scientific publications in PubMed. This particular one was seen at an address that was last used to submit a paper in the fall of 2000 and is part of the new spamtrap group. They’re doing their own bulking, no ESP involved here.