Fonecta Oy, a Finnish media agency, continues to spam addresses at a domain that has changed hands two years ago via their CRM tool despite endless e-mail opt-outs, phone calls, etc. Fonecta have assured the domain owner on a number of occasions that all old addresses have been removed, but actions speak louder than words: the spam continues.
Apparently Coast to Coast Career Fairs LLC, an organization that sets up and runs career fairs in cities across the United States, wants spamtraps to attend their San Diego Job Fair. They spammed an email address at a domain that has never had a valid email address in its history via ESP StreamSend, part of Web development and hosting firm EZ Publishing.
NOTE: Streamsend’s bulk emails are normally sent from the domain mailengine1.com. Tagged URLs in their emails use the domain streamsend.com.
GolfDealDepot.com, a portal for all things Golf, is spamming a years-dead email address via ESP SendGrid.
InteleTravel.com, an online travel agency, is spamming two years-dead email addresses via ESP VerticalResponse. I can’t rule out the possibility that the owners of both of these email addresses might have requested the email four or five years ago, but I do know that they cannot have responded to any offer in the past four years. I also know that any attempt to mail either of these email addresses resulted in a 500-level rejection for a period of over twelve consecutive months in 2007 and 2008. InteleTravel.com either has ignored bounces and completely failed to monitor or remove unresponsive email addresses, or they purchased a list.
AT&T is spamming the purest sort of spamtrap — an email address at a domain that has never had a legitimate email address at all — via ESP Cheetahmail (i.e. Experian). AT&T really should confirm opt-ins, or perhaps should prevent its marketing department from purchasing lists?
Marcus Evans Conferences are spamming addresses they know to be dead as of Aug 31, 2009 via ESP sendgrid.com. They’ve been informed on March 17, 2010 and several times afterwards, most recently on Oct 3, 2011. In response to the latest one, Caroline Nielsen of linguarama.com told me just to unsubscribe on Oct 3, 2011. I have no idea how many of these addresses they have in their files, and in accordance with the Data Protection Act, they have a duty to rid their registers of erroneous and outdated data.
Haymarket Media Group is spamming an address they know to be dead as of Aug 31, 2009 via ESP eCircle. Opt-outs have been sent on Sep 15, 2011 and Oct 4, 2011, after this message was received. No reply to either opt-out has been received from Haymarket. Update Nov 6: eCircle addressed transmissions to the spamtrap domain after they were informed of another customer of theirs doing the same.
Outdoor Living, a seller of patio furniture and other backyard and patio furnishings and equipment, is spamming a years-dead email address via ESP VerticalResponse.
Everest University, a for-profit online/distance learning company affiliated with Corinthian Colleges, is spamming a number of pure spamtraps, email addresses that never existed except in the minds of creative spammers, via ESP ExactTarget. Spamtraps do not request information about high school diplomas or college degrees. This remains true even when you purchase a “guaranteed” e-pended list that assigns real names to email addresses that never had them.
The digital signage company Four Winds Interactive is spamming several spamtraps via ESP ExactTarget. One spamtrap might be a mistake; several at different domains almost certainly means a purchased list.