Pastor Melissa Scott: Preaching to a Spamtrap
Pastor Melissa Scott, minister of Faith Center in Glendale, California, is sending bulk email advertisements to an email address that was closed in 2005. The email address in question began receiving email from Pastor Scott only a few months ago, so the cause is probably either an unconfirmed web form subscription, or a purchased list. The sending ESP is IContact.
Sending IP: 216.27.86.175
Spam Sample:
Actual Headers:
Received: from drone118.ral.icpbounce.com (drone118.ral.icpbounce.com [216.27.86.175])
by <xxx> (Postfix) with ESMTP id <xxx>
for <xxx>; Sun, 22 Jan 2012 12:xx:xx -0600 (CST)
DKIM-Signature: <xxx>
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:xx:xx -0500
To: <xxx>
From: "Pastor Scott" <pastor@pastormelissascottvideos.com>
Subject: LIVE: Sunday with Pastor Melissa Scott
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: PHPMailer (phpmailer.codeworxtech.com) [version 2.2]
Errors-To: bounces+<xxx>@icpbounce.com
List-Unsubscribe: <https://app.icontact.com/icp/listunsubscribe.php?<xxx>>
X-List-Unsubscribe: <https://app.icontact.com/icp/listunsubscribe.php?<xxx>>
X-Unsubscribe-Web: <https://app.icontact.com/icp/listunsubscribe.php?<xxx>>
X-ICPINFO: <xxx>
X-Return-Path-Hint: bounces+<xxx>@icpbounce.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="<xxx>"
Message-ID: <<xxx>@drone118.ral.icpbounce.com>
Readable Email:
From: Pastor Scott <pastor@pastormelissascottvideos.com>
To: <spamtrap>
Subject: LIVE: Sunday with Pastor Melissa Scott
Good morning!
To tune in live from your own computer, visit the link below — we will be live at EXACTLY 11am Pacific (2pm EST).
>> CLICK To Watch Live Now:
>> http://www.pastormelissascott.com/live.shtml
See you in a minute,
Pastor Scott
http://www.pastormelissascott.com
P.S. DON’T FORGET:
Call in after you’ve watched the service! Live people are waiting to take your call.
Just call in and let us know what you thought…
>> CALL TOLL FREE:
>> 1-800-338-3030
<removed>
This message was sent to <xxx> from:
Pastor Scott | P.O. Box 1 | Los Angeles, CA 90053-0001
Manage Your Subscription:
http://app.icontact.com/icp/mmail-mprofile.pl?<xxx>
Hi Catherine,
We’ve disabled this sender’s account pending a review of how addresses and permission are obtained. Thanks for the heads up!
Andrew
iContact
Good.
Another possibility would be that the church/ministry resurrected a very old list, one probably predating their current online efforts. The original owner of this spamtrap in the late 1990s might credibly have visited this church or asked for mailings. But that owner hasn’t actually used the email address since about 2002, although it was finally closed in 2005.
I’m a churchgoer myself. I can testify to the naivete of many churches and ministers about the proper use, care, and feeding of email address lists. <wry grin>
Pastor Scott’s account appears to have been re-enabled, and the spam started up again some weeks ago. :/ It’s hitting just one spamtrap, but whatever this site claims that it did to fix the problem did in fact fix it.