Jan
01

Doctors Without Borders: Emailing an OLD List?

Doctors Without Borders (aka Médecins Sans Frontières or just MSF), a highly-respected medical charity that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999, is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2008. This email address has not received bulk email from MSF since it was re-enabled after its timeout period in early 2010. Since this is a single spamtrap hit, I suspect that MSF is mailing a very old list of donors after allowing it to remain uncontacted for years. MSF might also have purchased a list. The ESP is Lyris.

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Jan
01

Happy 2012!

I’m back from the holiday road trip, a much needed vacation, so my blogs will resume as of today. It appears that InfiniteMho spent the intervening two weeks on his computer. Thanks for keeping up the blogging, Atro! Now somebody needs to give him and his family tickets to Tahiti so that he can get *off* the computer for a bit and relax. 😉

Dec
20

Blogging during the Holiday Season

Blogging will be light during the Christmas season, for the next two weeks, at least from me. I will be away from home on a road trip and visiting friends. I have not specifically asked the other bloggers, but assume that they will have other things to think about during this time as well. It would be nice if the spammers were also taking a vacation (sigh), but I see little hope of that. So not to worry: <Schwarznegger on> I’ll be back!<Schwarzenegger off>

Merry Christmas! (Feel free to substitute the holiday you celebrate or general good wishes.) 😉

Dec
17

Lenox: Selling Fine China to Spamtraps

Lenox, the highly-regarded American maker of fine china, is sending email to an email address that — if it ever existed — was closed before 2008. The email indicates that this email address “recently registered with a network website to receive special online offers”. As with Fuddruckers and a significant amount of other spam sent by ESP Yesmail, this is not true for any reasonable definition of “recently”. Either Lenox is allowing users to subscribe via a web form and is not confirming subscriptions, or Lenox purchased a list.

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Dec
16

Fuddruckers: Asking a Spamtrap to “Like” Them on Facebook

Fuddruckers, a high-end hamburger restaurant in the United States, is sending bulk email to an email address that has not belonged to a real person since 2007, offering the owner of that email address the chance to win a $500 gift card for “liking” Fuddruckers on Facebook. The email indicates that this email address “recently registered with a network website to receive special online offers”. This is not true for any reasonable definition of “recently”. Either Fuddruckers is allowing users to subscribe via a web form and is not confirming subscriptions, or Fuddruckers purchased a list. The ESP is Yesmail, a division of InfoGroup.

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Dec
15

BrightTalk: Selling Webcasting Services to a Spamtrap?

Professional community forum and webcasting service BrightTalk is sending bulk email to an email address that was closed in 2007. This email address has not received bulk email from BrightTalk since it was re-enabled after its timeout period in 2009. BrightTalk may be mailing a very old list after allowing it to remain uncontacted for years, may be allowing unconfirmed web form subscriptions, or might have purchased a list. The ESP is Silverpop.

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Dec
15

Americans United: Another Example of Why Subscriptions Should Be Confirmed

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a U.S.-based advocacy group which campaigns against attempts by religious groups to unduly influence politics and government, has just started sending bulk email updates to an email address that was closed in 2007. This email address was in timeout from 2008 through late 2009 before being turned into a spamtrap. Until today, it has received no email from Americans United. The ESP is MailChimp.

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Dec
15

(Resolved): Marketing Legal Training to a Spamtrap

This issue has been resolved. The blog remains posted because blogs shouldn’t disappear, to make sure that Google and other search engines and archives get the update, and in hopes that other people can learn something from it and the comments. 🙂

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Dec
14

S.C. Johnson: Selling Home Cleaning Products to… Homeless Spamtraps?

S.C. Johnson, a U.S.-based household products company known to every small child (and everybody else) in the United States, is sending bulk emails to email addresses that have not been live for many years. These email addresses receive no legitimate email. Until today, they have received no email from S.C. Johnson. So why are these email addresses suddenly getting email from this company? One spamtrap hit might be a typo; several usually means a purchased list. The ESP is Cheetahmail, a subsidiary of Experian.

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Dec
12

InteleTravel.com: Sending Travel Agent Information to Spamtraps?

InteleTravel.com, a reputable travel industry organization that recruits and supports home-based travel agents, is sending bulk emails to email addresses that either never existed or have been closed for years. None of the email addresses in question appear to have belonged to travel agents. One was at a company not in the travel business that has long since gone out of business. So how did these email addresses get on InteleTravel.com’s list? The ESP is Vertical Response.

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