AppyMail, a marketer of mobile apps, recently began to send its newsletter to an email address that was closed years before mobile apps or the mobile web existed. I’m not sure why, but the email address is not a likely candidate for a typo. The ESP is PulsePoint.
H-E-B, a regional grocery chain in south-central Texas and northeastern Mexico, is sending bulk email confirmation requests to a pure spamtrap with an associated name that never belonged to that spamtrap. The requests appear to be confirmed opt-in (COI) requests. If they are, then the spamtrap will not be added to H-E-B’s list despite either a typo during the subscription process or a subscription forgery. (Spamtraps don’t respond to confirmation requests any more than they subscribe for bulk email.) The sending ESP is PulsePoint.
House Party, a US-based organizer of “sales parties” in which individuals invite friends and family into their homes and try to sell them stuff, is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2008. In this case, the spam apparently occurred because the sender had a fallow list of email addresses for people who at one time were involved with them, or (more likely) obtained a list (or lists) of email addresses from one or more of the companies for which they arrange “house parties”. In either case, they acted with reckless disregard of the near-certainty than some of the email addresses were long-closed, or no longer interested in hearing from them. The sending ESP is PulsePoint.
Long, long ago I registered an email address on the San Jose Mercury News website for some reason or other. Today, somebody called the Twin Cities Pioneer Press is sending mail to me at the address I gave only to the Mercury News. Was my email address stolen or sold? No, probably not. A quick investigation reveals that both newspapers are owned by the same company, MediaNews Group. Was it spam? Most definitely! Somebody I didn’t give my email address to (Pioneer Press) is sending me mail to an address that I gave to some other company (or in this case, sister company). It may or may not be legal, but it is most certainly a bad practice.