Nov
07
Hunter Mountain: Purchasing a List?
New York ski resort Hunter Mountain is sending bulk email to a long-closed email address. The email address was last “live” in 2007. The ESP is BlueHornet, a division of Digital River.
Nov
07
Oakley Sign: Emailing a Long-Closed Email Address
Oakley Sign, part of Orlando-based iForia, Inc., is sending bulk email to a long-closed email address. The company web site has an extremely poor rating in the Web-O-Trust, and the WOT page for the domain indicates that SpamCop has seen spam advertising it today. Further, a comment on that page indicates a history of blog comment spam. The ESP is ExactTarget.
Nov
07
Symantec: still not getting it
Two weeks ago I wrote about how Symantec was not getting it. They still aren’t. Responsys aren’t helping, either.
Nov
06
Coast to Coast Career Fairs: Spamming E-Pended Lists for Job Fair?
Several weeks ago I blogged about spam from Coast to Coast Career Fairs LLC, an organization that sets up and runs career fairs in cities across the United States, to a spamtrap that never existed at all. Since then, the spam has continued. Subsequent spams from this sender showed that they have a name assigned to this spamtrap address, a name that has no connection to the email address in question since that email address has never been valid. This is a strong sign that Coast to Coast Career Fairs is using a purchased e-pended list. Their ESP is StreamSend, part of Web development and hosting firm EZ Publishing.
Nov
06
Toshiba Direct: Selling Laptop Computers to an OLD Spamtrap?
Toshiba America’s consumer and small business direct sales portal Toshiba Direct is sending bulk email to an email address that last had a real user in 2007. Either Toshiba ignores bounces, or they are spamming non-opted-in email addresses. The ESP is Responsys.
Nov
05
Home Depot: Emailing a Long-Closed Email Address
U.S.-based hardware store Home Depot is sending bulk email to a long-closed email address. The ESP is ExactTarget.
Nov
04
Military Industrial Buyers Guide: Spamming a Receive-Only Role Address
The Military Industrial Buyer’s Guide, a portal for military and government purchasers, is sending bulk email to a long-closed role address. This role address never sent any email, and never received email except to contact the former domain owner about issues with the company web site. There is absolutely NO way that this address ever requested this or any other bulk email. Either Military Industrial Buyer’s Guide accepts unverified subscriptions and somebody typoed an email address and domain, or Military Industrial Buyer’s Guide purchased a list. The ESP is SendGrid.
Nov
04
PrintCountry: Still Spamming Purchased Lists :/
A few weeks ago I blogged about a spamtrap hit by PrintCountry, an online printer ink and printing supplies seller. PrintCountry is still sending bulk email to the same long-closed email address, and is now hitting an additional email address that as far as I know has never existed at all. The email states that both email addresses was added to the system a short time ago. This is not possible; neither email address has been live since 2006, so there was nobody who could have subscribed that email address to any list in the past few weeks.
Nov
03
Veterans for a Strong America: Emailing a Spamtrap
Veterans for a Strong America, a conservative U.S. political organization that campaigns for a strong national defense, is mailing an email address that has not been live since well before the 2008 presidential election. The organization appears to be using a bulk email software package that we normally associate with one of the large ESPs, but it is mailing from its own IPs at Denver, Colorado-based ForTrust, LLC. The domain veteransforastrongamerica.org is registered with GoDaddy’s Domains by Proxy, a Whois Privacy service.
Nov
03
How I’m Handling Resolved Spam Reports
Readers may notice that certain spam report blogs of mine are now appearing with the prefix (Resolved Issue): instead of the spamming company name. If you check inside these blogs, they have a notice at the top indicating that the issue is resolved, and a tag that also says “Resolved”. The blogs are still there, and still contain the same information. All the comments are preserved as well. The only changes are to the title, an additional paragraph at top, and an additional tag.