[See Pt. I here : Vocus & PRWeb, wherein they re-use a very old list]
I thought I had an understanding with Vocus.com after the November 06 incident. Accidents never happen, in a perfect world. This world isn’t perfect, apparently.
Way back in 2008 or so I briefly had an account at PRWeb, and in 2009 I unsubscribed. Imagine my surprise when I received the following on November 06, 2013. I complained to the ESP, Vocus, and I was told they were handling it. I was then informed by IP-holder Eloqua that Vocus had unsubscribed me, but I was not given any information about how my address was added to this list nor why I was spammed.
See Pt. II – this gets even better!
Apparently ESPs Eloqua and Marketo are partnering with a list seller and email appender, NetProspex. NetProspex is not unknown to me or others who are active in email abuse issues. Among other accomplishments, NetProspex has managed to attain a listing in the Spamhaus Project’s ROKSO, their list of the “worst of the worst” spammers. Laura Atkins at Word to the Wise, a well-known email deliverability expert, blogged about NetProspex a few years ago. Nothing I know suggests that her blog is in any way out of date.
Mettler Toledo, a global provider of precision instruments and weighing equipment, wishes to reach out to scientists whose addresses they must have harvested from scientific articles available via PubMed. The ESP is Eloqua.
Read more…
Red Hat appears to be having a hard time processing bounces and removing ancient addresses from their lists. The ESP is Eloqua.
Vivint, a company that develops and sells wireless home automation and home security systems, is sending bulk emails to an email address that as best I know never existed. The domain was a small domain and only one email address there normally receives any spam but pump’n’dump, botnet style pills, porn, and pirated goods. This isn’t that email address. The ESP is Lyris.
IMAGINiT Technologies, a subsidiary of Rand Worldwide, is sending bulk email to a role address. This email address was used to receive email, but not to send email; it would never have subscribed to receive email from any person or company. The name in the email is not associated with this role address; it appears to have been added later, likely via an e-pending process. The ESP is Eloqua.
Convio, a company that provides donor contact and coordination software for non-profit organizations, is sending bulk email to a long-closed email address that, when live, was a role address rather than an individual email address. This email address was used to receive email, but not to send email. It would never have subscribed to receive email from Convio or any other person or company. The name in the email was not associated in any way with this email address; it appears to have been added later, likely via an e-pending process. Their ESP is Eloqua.
