The re-election campaign of U.S. Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida apparently learned nothing from the backlash against its first spam three days ago, because it spammed again today and hit the same spamtrap as it did then. It has switched ESPs, from Salsalabs, the ESP side of liberal U.S. political activist group Wired for Change, to ExactTarget.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), about whom I already blogged a couple of weeks ago, has apparently added some more email addresses that did not opt-in to its list in the last couple of weeks and is spamming them. The ESP is still Salsalabs, the ESP side of liberal U.S. political activist group Wired for Change.
A couple of months ago the Senate campaign of Joe Kyrillos in New Jersey began sending campaign emails to one of my spamtraps, an email address that was closed in 2004. The email nonetheless indicates that the email address was added to the system on March 30, 2012. The email was sent by ESP BlueHornet, a division of Digital River. URLs in the message body point to a marketing firm, GeniusMailer.
The Political Insider, a newsletter about conservative U.S. political issues which appears to be produced by a marketing firm in Alexandria, Virginia, recently started appearing in my spamtrap. It is sent to an email address that was closed in 2004. The email nonetheless indicates that the email address was added to the system on May 7, 2012. The email was sent by ESP BlueHornet, a division of Digital River. URLs in the message body point to a marketing firm, Paramount Communication Group.
An organization that calls itself “Conservatives United 2012” but that has no web site that I could find and sends email as conservativesunited2012@gmail.com instead of under a domain of its own, just started sending bulk email to an email address that was created earlier this year and subscribed only to former senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s campaign list. The email was sent by ESP BlueHornet, a division of Digital River. URLs in the message body point to email marketing firm VerveMail.
Fight for the Future, a non-profit formed in late 2010, is spamming addresses that are very unlikely to have anything to do with U.S. politics anyway and that, if they’re real, stopped existing years before Fight for the Future was formed. The ESP is SendGrid. The realnames seem real enough, the addresses seem made up. I wonder if this is a case of malicious forge-subscriptions. If that is so, practicing confirmed opt-in would have prevented this. The message itself does not shed any light on the address list building mechanisms of this sender.
Former Kentucky state treasurer and gubernatorial candidate Jonathan Miller, who now writes and tweets under the sobriquet “The Recovering Politician” (@RecoveringPol), apparently isn’t all that willing to let politics go. He’s still sending email to his old campaign list, which includes an email address that has not been live since 2003, long before he was running for governor. The ESP is Vertical Response.
This political spam was seen at addresses that have been dead for ten years.