MainSleaze

U.S. telecommunications and network service provider Sprint today sent bulk email to a couple dozen spamtraps of mine and (doubtless) a great many belonging to other antispammers. Most of these email addresses have been closed for periods ranging from five years to over a decade, if they were ever live at all. (I didn’t check them all.) The ESP is Acxiom Digital, which presumably did not expect a customer with Sprint’s reputation and experience to spam a list that could have been sourced from a Millionez CD seller. 🙁

Back in December I blogged about two spam runs through email appender FreshAddress. At the time I did not realize that Fresh Address provided email append services. I assumed that it was simply updating existing email lists, albeit in a highly spammy fashion. I wonder if Sprint might have just deployed the results of that or another email append operation through Acxiom without informing Acxiom of the nature of its list.

Sending IP: 209.11.164.5

Spam Sample:

Actual Headers:

Received: from mh.nextel.m0.net (mh.nextel.m0.net [209.11.164.5])
        by <xxx> (Postfix) with ESMTP id <xxx>
        for <xxx>; Sat, 18 Aug 2012 12:xx:xx -0000 (UT)
DKIM-Signature: <xxx>
DomainKey-Signature: <xxx>
Received: from [192.168.xx.xx] ([192.168.xx.xx:xx] helo=<xxx>)
        by <xxx> (envelope-from <sprint@sprint.delivery.net>)
        (ecelerity 3.3.2.44647 r(44647)) with ESMTP
        id <xxx>; Sat, 18 Aug 2012 05:xx:xx -0700
Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2012 05:xx:xx -0700 (PDT)
From: Sprint <sprint@sprint.delivery.net>
Reply-to: sprint@sprint.delivery.net
To: <xxx>
Message-ID: <xxx>
Subject: Be sure to watch your inbox for insider exclusives
Errors-to: sprint@sprint.delivery.net
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="<xxx>"
X-eid: <xxx>
X-pid: <xxx>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:sprint@sprint.delivery.net?subject=unsubscribe<xxx>>

Readable Email:

From: Sprint <sprint@sprint.delivery.net>
To: <spamtrap>
Subject: Be sure to watch your inbox for insider exclusives
Reply-to: sprint@sprint.delivery.net

>>To view this message with images, use the link below.
http://sprint.r.delivery.net/r/c/r?<xxx>

Here’s the scoop on what being an insider is all about.
http://sprint.r.delivery.net/r/c/r?<xxx>

***********************************************************

The first rule of being a Sprint insider…

Well, there actually aren’t any rules. Just look for great perks like these coming soon to your inbox:

<removed>

If you wish to unsubscribe from Sprint promotional emails, please use the link below.
http://sprint.p.delivery.net/m/u/nex/n.asp?<xxx>

To contact Sprint Nextel, write to:
Office of Privacy – Legal Department, Sprint Nextel
P.O. Box 4600, Reston, VA 20195.