KaBloom.com: Selling Flowers to a Seven-Year-Old Spamtrap
KaBloom.com, an online florist, has for many months been sending bulk email advertisements to a spamtrap that closed in 2006. (I first noticed these spams in July 2011.) The ESP is Vertical Response.
The spamtrap in this case did at one time belong to a real person, and the domain kabloom.com was first registered in 1998, so this could be an old customer. However, the email address was inactive and rejected all email for a period of over five years. At best, KaBloom.com ignored bounces and did not maintain its list between 2005 and 2010. At worst, it purchased a list.
Sending IP: 74.116.89.127
Spam Sample:
Actual Headers:
Received: from mkt20-sc.verticalresponse.com (mkt20-sc.verticalresponse.com [74.116.89.127])
by <xxx> (Postfix) with ESMTP id <xxx>
for <xxx>; Tue, 29 May 2012 15:xx:xx -0000 (UT)
DomainKey-Signature: <xxx>
DKIM-Signature: <xxx>
Received: from [10.4.xx.xx] ([10.4.xx.xx:xx] helo=<xxx>.verticalresponse.com)
by demosthenes (envelope-from <bounces-<xxx>@b.cts.vresp.com>)
(ecelerity 3.0.28.38595 r(38597)) with ESMTP
id <xxx>; Tue, 29 May 2012 08:xx:xx -0700
From: "KaBloom.com" <KaBloom.com@mail.vresp.com>
Reply-To: "KaBloom.com" <reply-<xxx>@u.cts.vresp.com>
To: <xxx>
Subject: FW: Very Important...
Date: Tue, 29 May 2012 15:xx:xx +0000
Message-ID: <<xxx>@mail.vresp.com>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:reply-<xxx>@u.cts.vresp.com?subject=unsubscribe>
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Company_ID: <xxx>
X-vrfbldomain: fbl.p0.verticalresponse.com
X-vrpod: p0
X-CTS-Enabled: <xxx>
X-Campaign: <xxx>
X-vrrpmm: <xxx>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="<xxx>";
charset="UTF-8"
Readable Email:
From: KaBloom.com <KaBloom.com@mail.vresp.com>
To: <spamtrap>
Subject: FW: Very Important…
Reply-To: KaBloom.com <reply-<xxx>@u.cts.vresp.com>
http://cts.vresp.com/c/?KaBloom.comLTD/<xxx>
shop by phone
1-800-KaBloom (522-5666)
<removed>
This message was sent by KaBloom.com using VerticalResponse
KaBloom.com, LTD
305 Harvard Street
Brookline, Massachusetts 02446
US
Thank you for this post, we are working with the client to purge their non-responders and review list acquisition strategies.
-Kiersti
Excellent. 🙂 I’ll let you know what appears (or doesn’t appear) in my inbox. I should have said something about this sender sooner, but “one-off” spamtrap hits are common and the causes are usually ambiguous. So I waited til I had something to say about it.
Kiersti, KaBloom is still hitting the same spamtrap after the list cleaning. (Or has that happened yet?)