Oct
26
Whitepapers Weekly
Does this count as Mainsleaze? Whitepapers Weekly is not a big brand that I know of, but they seem to be sending mail via a legitimate email service provider called Benchmark Email, to email addresses that have never existed. Apparently, this time around, they’re dying to talk to me about enterprise database options.
Source IP: 64.34.168.39.
Return-Path: <bounce@bmsend.com> Received: from mailrelay2.com (mailrelay2.com. [64.34.168.39]) by x with ESMTP id x; Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:x:x -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <added by my ISP> Received: from mailrelay2.com (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by mailrelay2.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id D002D23FA68 for <x>; Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:x:x -0400 (EDT) Reply-To: info@whitepapersweekly.com X-Identify: <x_x@benchmarkemail.com> X-Mailer: x, x, x, x X-campaignid: x From: "WhitepapersWeekly"<info@whitepapersweekly.com> Sender: "WhitepapersWeekly"<info@evanmac.bmsend.com> To: "Person" <x> Subject: Person: NoSQL for Big Data in the Enterprise Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 13:x:x -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0
That definitely counts as mainsleaze. Mainsleaze as defined here does not mean a BIG company, but an otherwise LEGITIMATE company, sending from their own IPs or a recognized ESP. Whitepapers Weekly seems to be a perfectly legitimate newsletter — except that it’s being spammed. Benchmark email is a relatively small ESP, but one known to anybody who follows the ESP space.
I would like to hear their explanation for this.
To whom it may concern:
My name is RJ Niknami, I am the Deliverability & Abuse Dept.’s Project Manager here at Benchmark Email. I’ll be more than happy to add an email address or a domain, to our Network-wide Master Unsubscribe List, that no longer wishes to receive emails campaigns from Benchmark Email and it’s clients. Just send an email to rj@benchmarkemail.com or abuse@benchmarkemail.com and it will be done.
Best,
RJ
Since SpamBouncer indicated she’d let me address this particular topic with you, let me state you’re most welcome to add the domain atro.fi to your master unsub list, as documented elsewhere on this site (see blogger profiles, for example). I’d even go a step further and suggest that you might add it to a list of domains/addresses that you use for quality control of your customers’ prospective new lists. The presence of any addresses in that domain on a list indicates it hasn’t been updated since August 31, 2009. For whatever it’s worth, I have no record of ever having had to talk to Benchmark Email about mail sent to those addresses. It doesn’t mean you might not gain a customer who wishes to do that in the future.
I’ll let Atro respond to your specific offer, Mr. Niknami. It sounds like what he wants, at least mostly.
It *is* perfectly conceivable, though, that somebody who buys a new domain might want all of the old email addresses opted out en-masse, but not to block new subscriptions. Not all bulk email is unwelcome. You are an ESP, not the company sending the email, so you might be sending for a company with a list that the new owner or one of his/her users asks to be on. I’m not entirely sure how you could best handle that situation, but it’s worth thinking about. (Please feel free to post ideas here.)
I would suggest that you might want to set up a domain-wide opt-out facility for owners and operators of domains on your web site. Perhaps you could do a confirmation with the postmaster address of the domain to confirm that requests are coming from the domain owner. You might also have two options available — one that says “Block all future email to this domain” and one that says “Unsubscribe all email addresses that were added before today’s date”. Do you see any problems with that idea?
Hey SB,
I’ll put your ideas forward at our next meeting, I appreciate your engagement. If we come up with some ideas of our own, we’ll get your input.
RJ
I daily get these spam messages. Yes many years ago I was ignorant about spammers and unfortunately used the ‘opted out’ feature not knowing that this is an open invitation for White Papers Weekly to send me even more messages.
This is bizarre since they are not legitimate and feel the need to keep sending me mail that I dispose of and warn others about.
Too bad that they do not have any means of voice contact to discus my displeasure with them.
I wonder if they are hooked up with Extremis and selling my email on a spam list.
Hi all,
RJ Recently left the Benchmark team in pursuit of higher goals. But i want to let you know that our Abuse Committee still does monitor and take action on all abuse complaints that we receive. If you have received any unsolicited email from this sender, please be sure to forward the offending email to abuse@benchmarkemail.com.
While our privacy policy does limit what I can say, I can say that we do have a very strict policy regarding unsolicited email. We require that each contact uploaded by our senders is of an opt-in nature, and that the sender maintain records of such opt-in status. Your reports of unsolicited email help us identify senders who are in violation of these terms, and we will not hesitate to terminate any account that we feel is not sending emails in ernest.
Best,
Richard
FAO Richard Vohsing
As a victim of the endless spam emails from your organisation received daily, I have emailed you twice today asking you to unsubscribe me and have tried in the past to no effect using the allegedly trustworthy email address removal link at the bottom of your emails. Apart from the immense irritation of receiving emails from different ESPs every time from your organisation, these emails are disturbing because your organisation tries so hard to evade my organisation’s spam filters as they appear to be sent from unique email addresses every single time. It is a sad indictment on your company that in this current age you should proliferate spam and violate the privacy and quota of my and other users inboxes and become infamous online as a result.
I wonder if the MainSleaze blog is the right channel for communications between irate third parties who have received spam and those who represent the organisations involved in the sending. Nonetheless, I figured the comment needed to be approved.
Mr Vohsing, the “Scrum Insights / PMP Certification” spammers that I mentioned to you in private email a few weeks ago are alive and well on Benchmark Email. So I have an issue with you too.
FAO Richard Vohsing
I acknowledge your email of 7 Nov 2013 citing that Whitepapersweekly was removed from your network over a year ago due to the multiple complaints you’ve received. However, since contacting Whitepapersweekly directly via their website as per your suggestion, I’ve received even more mainsleaze spam from them (as they’ve ignore my request) so I’ve been forced to report them to the Federal Trade Commission spam@uce.gov for resolution.
Hello all, Richard here again,
@ CL
That would be the best course of action I can suggest for now. Beyond that, I would also suggest contacting your IT administrators and requesting that they create some spam filter rules to block those servers/domains. Sadly, I have not seen that the FTC has done much regarding complaints that I have sent to them myself. Especially when the sending servers are located out of the USA. I would also suggest sending copies of their emails to SpamCop.
@InfiniteMho
Per my investigations, Scrum Insights is not connected with Whitepapers Weekly in any way. Due to our Privacy policy, I cannot discuss details about the issue specifically, however I can say that your complaint did indeed identify a problem within Scrum Insights methods(One that they were not fully aware of), and we were able to work with them to resolve the issue. Since then, we have not seen any further complaints regarding their emails. If you have continued to receive emails from them, please be sure to let me know.
As an ESP, we try to remain as transparent as possible regarding such issues. Our Privacy policy can be limiting at times, however I want to reassure each of you that all complaints that we receive are fully investigated and acted on to the point that we are confident that the issue has been resolved.
Best,
Richard