MainSleaze

Today’s spam from The Political Insider, a newsletter that had previously appeared to be about conservative U.S. political issues and about which I blogged once already, consists solely of a non-political advertisement for the Pimsleur System, a well-known language education program in the U.S. As before, the email was sent by ESP BlueHornet, a division of Digital River. As before, URLs in the message body point to a marketing firm, Paramount Communication Group.

Paramount Communications Group appears to send “The Political Insider” to its own list, not to lists supplied by customers. Allowing customers to advertise in a newsletter produced by a marketing company can be a legitimate form of email advertising. I am subscribed to a couple of newsletters that include paid advertisements, most of them for products targeted to people who find the non-advertising material on the list of interest. However, the unsubscribe message in this edition of “The Political Insider” suggests that the recipient subscribed to receive Pimsleur-related emails, not “The Political Insider”. Nothing else that I have seen in any “issue” of “The Political Insider” is related to Pimsleur. Further, upon reviewing the last few issues of “The Political Insider”, I have verified that it consists solely of individual advertisements, with no other content, and that not all of those advertisements are political in nature. This “newsletter” is nothing of the kind: it is (at least in my opinion) straightforward commercial spam that is only masquerading as a political newsletter.

Pimsleur almost certainly did not realize that this marketer was advertising to an opt-out email list and that the From and Subject lines of the advertisements were misleading and intended to appear to be political newsletters. Nevertheless, Pimsleur is responsible for choosing its marketing partners and agents properly. Pimsleur needs to stop this company from spamming on its behalf.

Digital River also needs to quit providing bulk email services to its spamming customer. :/

Sending IP: 216.54.194.138

Spam Sample:

Actual Headers:

Received: from smtp.juneau.bluehornet.com (smtp.juneau.bluehornet.com [216.54.194.138])
        by <xxx> (Postfix) with ESMTP id <xxx>
        for <xxx>; Thu, 17 May 2012 12:xx:xx UT
X-MSFBL: <xxx>
DKIM-Signature: <xxx>
Received: from [10.64.xx.xx] ([10.64.xx.xx:xx] helo=localhost.localdomain)
        by <xxx> (envelope-from <bounce-use=<xxx>@returnpath.bluehornet.com>)
        (ecelerity 3.4.0.22880 r(MessageSystems/Momo-3.4:<xxx>)) with ESMTP
        id <xxx>; Thu, 17 May 2012 12:xx:xx UT
Message-ID: <xxx>
Date: Thu, 17 May 2012 10:xx:xx UT
From: "The Political Insider" <marketing@thepoliticalinsider.com>
Reply-To: marketing@thepoliticalinsider.com
To: <xxx>
X-Outgoing: juneau
Subject: Rapid Language Learning Program Purchased by the FBI Revealed
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:unsub-<xxx>@listunsub.bluehornet.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
    boundary="<xxx>"

Readable Email:

From: The Political Insider <marketing@thepoliticalinsider.com>
To: <spamtrap>
Subject: Rapid Language Learning Program Purchased by the FBI Revealed
Reply-To: marketing@thepoliticalinsider.com

[URL:] http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/<xxx>
[Image URL:] http://www.languagesecrets.com/acq-emails/images/<xxx>

If you no longer wish to receive offers from Pimsleur Approach please click here:

[Unsubscribe URL:] http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/<xxx>

Forward this Email to a Friend:

[Mailto URL:] marketing@thepoliticalinsider.com
[Image URL ALT Text string:] Advertising Opportunities
[Image URL:] http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/images/email/advertise.jpg

ThePoliticalInsider.com
P.O. Box 25574
Alexandria, VA 22313