MainSleaze

Alurium, Inc., a cloud computing and web hosting company, sent a bulk email advertisement for a webinar to a number of spamtraps today. None of these spamtraps had ever heard from Alurium before, at least not since exiting their timeout periods and being turned into spamtraps. The ESP is Sendgrid.

As I was preparing this blog, I noticed that Spamhaus had already listed the IP that hosts the A record for the alurium.com domain. I expect that they also listed the sending IP, but Sendgrid (which has aggressively gone after spam and spammers on its network lately) presumably shut down the mailing and had that IP removed before I saw the spam.

I usually don’t bother to blog about spam that already resulted in an SBL listing. When an ISP or web hosting company such as this spams to advertise its services, however, they deserve a public shaming. 🙁 Whoever at Alurium decided to spam despite knowing what spam is and that purchasing lists for bulk email is spam deserves at very least a major black mark on his or her corporate record. I could say more, but we try to keep the language on this blog PG-rated. 🙁

Sending IP: 74.63.234.154

Spam Sample:

Actual Headers:

Received: from o1.smtp.alurium.com (o1.smtp.alurium.com [74.63.234.154])
        by <xxx> (Postfix) with SMTP id <xxx>
        for <xxx>; Mon,  2 Apr 2012 15:xx:xx <xxx>
DKIM-Signature: <xxx>
DomainKey-Signature: <xxx>
Received: by 10.8.xx.xx with SMTP id <xxx>
        Mon, 02 Apr 2012 10:xx:xx <xxx>
Received: from 127.0.0.1 (unknown [mi2])
        by mi2.sendgrid.net (SG) with ESMTP id <xxx>
        for <xxx>; Mon, 02 Apr 2012 10:xx:xx <xxx>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
        boundary="<xxx>"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: [4/9/12 Webinar] Cloud Computing: Taking IT to the Next Level
Message-ID: <<xxx>@mf40.sendgrid.net>
Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2012 10:xx:xx <xxx>
X-Sendgrid-EID: <xxx>
X-Sendgrid-ID: <xxx>
list-unsubscribe: <http://smtp.alurium.com/wf/unsubscribe?<xxx>>
From: Alurium Cloud Computing <info@alurium.com>
To: <xxx>
Reply-To: info@alurium.com

Readable Email:

From: Alurium Cloud Computing <info@alurium.com>
To: <spamtrap>
Subject: [4/9/12 Webinar] Cloud Computing: Taking IT to the Next Level
Reply-To: info@alurium.com

Eliminating the typical pain points involved with provisioning infrastructure for IT projects and tracking the costs on a project basis and calculating ROI. Specifically, we will look at:

• Access to virtually limitless capacity on demand
• Utilizing a pay per use model and no long term commitments
• Moving from CAPEX towards an OPEX model
• Improving Project/Cost Center chargeback management

Title:Cloud Computing: Taking IT to the Next Level
Date:Monday, April 9, 2012
Time:12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EDT

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/<xxx> (https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/<xxx>)