MainSleaze

Upromise, a college funding program operated by U.S. financial services company Sallie Mae, today sent a “membership notice” to a spamtrap email address that has never before heard from either Upromise or Sallie Mae. I have seen a great deal of spam for loan offers and college financial assistance to that spamtrap, which appears to have been placed on a (likely e-pended) list supposedly targeted at would-be college students and sold to all and sundry. :/ The ESP is Acxiom Digital.

Sending IP: 209.11.164.178

Spam Sample:

Actual Headers:

Received: from client-1-178.delivery.net (client-1-178.delivery.net [209.11.164.178])
        by <xxx> (Postfix) with ESMTP id <xxx>
        for <xxx>; Mon,  2 Apr 2012 12:xx:xx <xxx>
DomainKey-Signature: <xxx>
DKIM-Signature: <xxx>
Received: from [192.168.xx.xx] ([192.168.xx.xx:xx] helo=<xxx>)
        by <xxx> (envelope-from <member@your.upromise.com>)
        (ecelerity 2.2.2.36 r(26875/27517M)) with ESMTP
        id <xxx>; Mon, 02 Apr 2012 10:xx:xx <xxx>
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2012 10:xx:xx <xxx>
From: Upromise <member@your.upromise.com>
Reply-to: member@your.upromise.com
To: <xxx>
Message-ID: <xxx>
Subject: An important enhancement to your Upromise membership
Errors-to: member@your.upromise.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset="ISO-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
X-eid: <xxx>
X-pid: <xxx>

Readable Email:

From: Upromise <member@your.upromise.com>
To: <spamtrap>
Subject: An important enhancement to your Upromise membership
Reply-to: member@your.upromise.com

Dear <e-pended name removed>:

We would personally like to let you know about an exciting change to your Upromise account.

Effective immediately, we have upgraded our Online Shopping service to make it easier to earn more cash back for college. Upromise helps millions of members recognize the dream of a higher education; now they can earn even faster for their family’s goals.

<removed>

© 2012 Upromise, Inc. All rights are reserved. Upromise and the Upromise logo are registered service marks of Upromise, Inc. Sallie Mae is a registered service mark of Sallie Mae, Inc. Other logos are trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.

Upromise, Inc., 95 Wells Ave, Suite 160, Newton, MA 02459.