MainSleaze

The campaign of Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2003, asking for the support of his “fellow conservative”. The email nonetheless indicates that the email address was added to the system on January 10, 2012. The ESP is BlueHornet, a division of Digital River.

A single spamtrap hit, even under these circumstances, does not indicate that the Santorum campaign is deliberately spamming, but it does show carelessness. In a hotly-fought political campaign, dishonest opponents are not above pulling dirty tricks to cause problems for a candidate or damage his reputation with voters. Among those is subscribing suspected or known spamtraps to the mailing lists of the candidates that they want to defeat, and salting lists that are supposed to consist of supporters with known spamtraps or opponents that can be counted on to complain. A campaign that purchases lists or that accepts unconfirmed subscriptions to their mailing list is making themselves a target for this sort of activity. I don’t believe that this is what Rick Santorum or his campaign want.

Sending IP: 67.216.226.226

Spam Sample:

Actual Headers:

Received: from smtp.holland.bluehornet.com (smtp.holland.bluehornet.com [67.216.226.226])
        by <xxx> (Postfix) with ESMTP id <xxx>
        for <xxx>; Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:xx:xx -0600 (CST)
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 3.0.28.38595 r(<xxx>)) with ESMTP
        id <xxx>; Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:xx:xx -0800
Message-ID: <xxx>
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2012 09:xx:xx -0800
From: "Rick Santorum" <info@ricksantorum.com>
Reply-To: info@ricksantorum.com
To: <xxx>
X-Outgoing: holland
Subject: Rick Santorum: Presidents Dukakis, Gore, Kerry and McCain
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:unsub-<xxx>@listunsub.bluehornet.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
    boundary="<xxx>"

Readable Email:

From: Rick Santorum <info@ricksantorum.com>
To: <spamtrap>
Subject: Rick Santorum: Presidents Dukakis, Gore, Kerry and McCain
Reply-To: info@ricksantorum.com

Fellow Conservative,

Americans have been down this road before.

At various times both parties nominated boring candidates because they were considered “electable”. In every one of those cases, they weren’t electable at all. Now Republicans are again thinking about nominating another bland and boring candidate for President – Mitt Romney.

If we don’t love our candidate, how can we expect Democrats and Independents to?

Be a part of this historic campaign by donating just $35. I will make your voice heard in Washington!

https://transaxt.com/Donate/<xxx>/RickSantorumforPresident/

Sincerely,

Rick Santorum

<removed>

Mail a donate here: Rick Santorum for Presdient
P.O. Box 37
Verona, PA 15147

Paid for by Rick Santorum for President

This message was intended for: <xxx>
You were added to the system January 10, 2012. For more information please follow the URL below:

http://email.geniusmailer.com/p/<xxx>

Follow the URL below to update your preferences or opt-out:
http://email.geniusmailer.com/p/<xxx>