Jan
17

How to Hit a Spamtrap and Do It Right

H-E-B, a regional grocery chain in south-central Texas and northeastern Mexico, is sending bulk email confirmation requests to a pure spamtrap with an associated name that never belonged to that spamtrap. The requests appear to be confirmed opt-in (COI) requests. If they are, then the spamtrap will not be added to H-E-B’s list despite either a typo during the subscription process or a subscription forgery. (Spamtraps don’t respond to confirmation requests any more than they subscribe for bulk email.) The sending ESP is PulsePoint.

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Jan
16

Academic Insight: Spamtraps Don’t Take the SAT or ACT

Academic Insight, a U.S.-based academic test preparation service, is sending bulk email advertisements to an email address that was closed in 2003. This spamtrap has also not previously received email from this company. The ESP is Vertical Response.

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Jan
14

Computer Discount Warehouse: Sending to 6+ Year Closed Role Address

Computer and software retailer Computer Discount Warehouse (CDW) is sending bulk email to a role address closed in 2005. Although it never sent email or signed onto lists, this particular role address receives a great deal of snowshoe spam and a respectable amount of mainsleaze spam. This is probably the case because it doesn’t have a standard role address name and is therefore rarely suppressed or detected by the usual sanity checking routines at ESPs. The ESP is ExactTarget.

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Jan
13

Rick Santorum: Campaigning to a 9-Years-Gone Email Address

The campaign of Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2003, asking for the support of his “fellow conservative”. The email nonetheless indicates that the email address was added to the system on January 10, 2012. The ESP is BlueHornet, a division of Digital River.

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Jan
13

American Media, Inc.: Selling Magazines to a Spamtrap

U.S.-based publisher American Media, Inc. is sending email advertisements for Reality Weekly Magazine to an email address that has not belonged to a real person for over four years. This email address has not previously received email from American Media since it completed its timeout period and was re-enabled as a spamtrap. The ESP is Yesmail, a subsidiary of Infogroup.

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Jan
13

True Wholesale Houses: Urging a Spamtrap to Invest in Real Estate

Residential real estate investment firm True Wholesale Houses is sending bulk email advertisements to an email address that was closed in 2003. The firm has a plausible, but incorrect, name associated with the email address, which normally indicates an e-pended list. This email address has also not previously received email from this firm. The ESP is Sendgrid.

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Jan
12

California State Board of Equalization: Collecting Taxes From a Spamtrap?

The California State Board of Equalization, the tax authority of the U.S. state of California, sent a bulk email reminder to pay taxes to an email address that was closed in 2003 and has not received legitimate email for many, MANY years. Nonetheless, like most email sent by ESP Yesmail from this particular set of IPs, the spam claims that this long-dead email address “recently registered with a network website to receive special online offers”.

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Jan
12

Cabelas: Asking a Dead Email Address to Rate Purchases

Cabelas, a U.S.-based outdoor supplies retailer, is sending bulk email to an email address that was just re-enabled after passing its twelve-month timeout period. Assuming that the previous owner of this email address had signed up to receive Cabelas email, Cabelas ignored twelve months of 500-level SMTP rejections and continued to email this email address. That’s right — Cabelas is asking a customer whose email bounced for at least a year to rate his (or her) satisfaction with his purchases. As people say on Twitter, #LAME.

Unlike most companies that send bulk email, Cabelas does not appear to use an ESP; this email was sent from their own IPs.

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Jan
11

SalsaLabs: Inviting More Spamtraps to Webinars :/

SalsaLabs, the ESP side of liberal U.S. political activist group Wired for Change, is sending bulk email to yet more email addresses that were closed years ago, inviting the owners to a Webinar on the tools and techniques for advocacy organizations. Since SalsaLabs is an ESP as well as an organization that provides tools and training to mostly-liberal and leftist advocacy groups, this email was sent by them from their own IPs.

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Jan
10

A Blast from the Past: Return Path Acquires OtherInBox

This morning a heavy hitter in the legitimate bulk email community, reputation service Return Path, announced that it has acquired OtherInBox, an interesting free webmail provider with some good tools for managing email overload. Return Path plans to use the data that users of OtherInBox generate by their activities to improve its main reputation products and gain more insight into “the user experience” with email.

Despite my respect for Return Path and interest in their activities, I doubt I’d have bothered to comment on this except for an interesting side issue: the founder of OtherInBox is Joshua Baer, a former titan in the spam email business in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I became aware of OtherInBox a few months ago after I stumbled across Baer on Twitter and, wanting to find out what he was up to, went over to the OtherInBox web site.

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