Skype: Emailing Upgrade Notices to Long-Closed Email Addresses

Microsoft Skype sent a massive emailing out warning customers in Scandanavia that their Skype versions were soon to be phased out and urging them to upgrade. The mailing hit around 50 spamtraps. The ESP is Acxiom.

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TravelSmith: Outfitting the Traveling Spamtrap

TravelSmith, an online travel-related clothing and accessories retailer, has been sending bulk email advertisements for many months (since I first noticed) to an email address that been closed since 2005. The ESP is Cheetahmail, a subsidiary of Experian.

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Moritz Cadillac: I Didn’t Know Spamtraps Owned Cars….

Moritz Cadillac, an auto dealership in Arlington, Texas, is sending bulk email to an email address that closed in 2005. The ESP is ExactTarget.

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GuideStar: The Consequences of Bad Bounce Processing

GuideStar, a highly respected non-profit organization whose work is to collect information about and provide resources to other non-profit organizations, is still sending email to an email address that almost certainly did request that email — sometime in the late 1990s. The email address was closed and disabled in 2004, however, and was not re-enabled as a spamtrap until 2008. Four years of 500-level SMTP rejections failed to get it removed from GuideStar’s list. How much of that list now consists of old, dead email addresses? How much of it now consists of spamtraps? The ESP is fortunately Lyris, which actually cares about good list management and should be able to help GuideStar fix this problem.

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