July 2017 in Spamtraps: ESPs
ESP mail seen in spamtraps, July 2017
Better late than never?
The percentage of ESP sent mail vs all mail seen in the spamtraps was 3.2%, which was up 24% from June. The amount of all mail was down 28%. There are no surprises in the top 10 participant list, but the gap between MailChimp and the other two top contestants is growing in a rather favourable direction for MC, and at the same time, SendGrid’s participation is going in a bad direction. My Virtual Fleet is still spewing, but there was a new top contestant, who was using the very inventive “no-reply.net” as their sending domain – I am really quite surprised that this would even have been allowed. And of course, the content of those mails, which came only on July 9 and 10, were bank phishing against BB&T.
Bubbling under the top 10 this month: Sparkpost (1.8%), Sailthru (1.7%), Mapp Digital (1.5%).
| RATING | PARTICIPANT | PERCENTAGE | NOTES | MOST PROMINENT CUSTOMER |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | All others | 44.9% | ||
| 1 | SendGrid | 12.3% | BB&T phisher (10.5%) | |
| 2 | SalesForce Marketing Cloud | 10.2% | ExactTarget | Kohls (9.6%) |
| 3 | MailChimp | 6.5% | (7.7% Mandrill) | eccp.com European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (1.2%) |
| 4 | Experian | 6.1% | Walgreens (7.7%) | |
| 5 | Constant Contact | 4.0% | Advisor Perspectives (46%) | |
| 6 | Oracle Marketing Cloud | 3.8% | Responsys, Eloqua and RightNow | Nordstrom (12%) |
| 7 | Amazon SES | 3.5% | teaparty.org (6.3%) | |
| 8 | Mailgun | 2.8% | Anonymous Wix subscriber with several empty websites (leanbeas.com, tooshops.com, beesfirst.com, bescommerce.com, cuponiess.com) (25%) | |
| 9 | Epsilon | 2.2% | DICK’S Sporting Goods (33%) | |
| 10 | IBM Marketing Cloud | 2.1% | Silverpop | Menards (9.4%) |
Here’s the “relative badness” graph.
Average amount of messages per separate customer of ESP, July 2017
Finally, the “top spamming customers” table.
| RATING | CUSTOMER | ESP | % OF THIS ESP | % OF ALL ESP MAIL IN SPAMTRAPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Advisor Perspectives | Constant Contact | 46% | 1.8% |
| 2 | BB&T phisher | SendGrid | 10.5% | 1.3% |
| 3 | Zillow | Message Systems (SparkPost) | 61% | 1.1% |
| 4 | Kohls | Salesforce Marketing Cloud | 9.6% | 1.0% |
| 5 | My Virtual Fleet | SendGrid | 6.8% | 0.8% |
Did the BB&T phisher get terminated by SendGrid?
Hello,
This is Ryan Harris, manager of Compliance with SendGrid. The BB&T phisher exposed a loophole in our system that we applied defenses towards. Reviewing current metrics and logs, this phishing group has not attempted an attack through us again. Or if they have our defenses have stopped them from abusive activity.
Ryan
As said originally, the spew came on July 9-10 and didn’t show up ever after. They would have continued had they been able to, I’m sure.