American Heart Association: Emailing a Spamtrap on a “Targeted” List?

U.S. charity American Heart Association is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2008, collecting donations for its childhood obesity initiative. This is the first spam that this email address has received from the American Heart Association since it exited its timeout period in late 2009. This email address receives a great deal of spam from non-profit and political groups, an amount that has been increasing steadily over the past two years. While it is possible that a great many non-profit and political organizations are sending to fallow lists, the increase in spam sent to this email address over the past six months leads me to believe that it is probably on a “targeted” list sold to non-profit and political senders. The ESP is ExactTarget.

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Exposures: Emailing an E-Pended Email Address?

Exposures, a photograph-based personalized gifts seller affiliated with catalog retailer Miles Kimball, is sending bulk email to the same spamtrap as Miles Kimball and another Miles Kimball affiliate. The ESP is E-Dialog.

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AvantGardenDecor.com: Advertising Gift Ideas to a Spamtrap

AvantGardenDecor.com, an outdoor furniture and supplies merchant, is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2008. This email address has not previously received email from this sender, either directly or via an ESP, since it completed its timeout period and was reactivated in mid-2011. The ESP is Listrak.

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Broderbund: Selling Software to a Spamtrap?

U.S. software maker Broderbund is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2007. The spam to this email address started up two or three weeks ago; it had not previously received email from Broderbund either directly or via an ESP since it completed its timeout period and was reactivated in 2009. The ESP is ExactTarget.

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Julia Ager, Salsa Labs: A Spamtrap “Expressed Interest”?

SalsaLabs, the ESP side of liberal U.S. political activist group Wired for Change, is mailing an email address that has not been live for many years (since before the 2008 presidential election), thanking it for expressing interest in Salsalabs’ services (like, *when*?) and asking for the person behind it to watch a demonstration. It appears that SalsaLabs ignored bounces to email to their own list and continues to send email for years despite not having received any responses. This is really lame, Salsalabs. A professional ESP should know better than to keep pounding email addresses that don’t respond!

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Miles Kimball: Selling Christmas Gifts to an E-Pended Spamtrap?

Catalog retailer Miles Kimball is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2007. The name in the bulk email is female, but the email address before it was closed belonged to a man, which normally indicates an e-pended list. In addition, Miles Kimball’s web site shows “As We Change” as a preferred partner. This is the same e-pended email address that As We Change hit a few weeks ago; I blogged about that at the time. Miles Kimball appears to be sharing the same e-pended list with them. The ESP is E-Dialog.

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Colonial Candle: Emailing a Spamtrap

Colonial Candle, a maker of scented and specialty candles, is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2008. Colonial Candle may be mailing a fallow list, may be adding web form subscriptions directly to their list without confirming them first (a good way to ensure that typoed email addresses and bogus third-party subscriptions are NOT weeded out), or may have purchased a list. The ESP is Silverpop.

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Blair: Selling Clothes, Accessories, and Home Goods to a Spamtrap

Blair, a U.S.-based department store with an established mail order operation, is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed before 2008. Blair might be mailing a fallow email list, might be accepting unconfirmed web form subscriptions, or might have purchased a list. Their ESP is Yesmail, a division of Infogroup.

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Bass Pro Shops: Selling Sporting Gear to a Stolen Email Database

Well, I had meant to post this about a week ago, but see that Spambouncer beat me to the post. I do however need to add to this situation as

  1. It does involved the sending of spam to a stolen email address (mine)
  2. Per Spambouncer’s post I see that even though I’ve already notified the ESP Cheetahmail, a division of Experian weeks ago that this was occurring they still haven’t taken action on the customer and or the list.

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Saunalahti and Fonecta: Still at it

In reference to my Nov 15 post on the topic.

It’s illegal spam.  The plaintext content does not indicate the address source (mandatory requirement as per law), nor a way of getting removed from the mailing list. The HTML content may indicate an address source, but I just can’t view it with Mutt…

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