Dec
01

A Rather Disturbing Spam and Reminder From Childhood

Today I received a spam at one of my personal email addresses with the subject Public Records Report For, followed by a name that was decidedly not mine. I’m glad for that; had it been my name, I would have wondered just what else this sender knew about me or was telling others about me. 🙁 The sender was an entity named Archives.com, which I had never heard of previously but whose web site is amazingly similar to that of the much-better-known Ancestry.com. The ESP was EmailLabs (also known of as Lyris, Sparklist, and Uptilt).

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Aug
06

Informing a Ten-Year-Old Spamtrap about Current Events

Time Europe recently started to send their “Weekly Edition” summaries of stories to an email address at my employer that was closed before I started to work there. I re-enabled it in 2010 as a spamtrap. I do not doubt that many people have asked for the attached email, but this email address did not ask for any bulk email after 2001. The ESP is CheetahMail.

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Jun
19

The Case of the Traveling Email Address

Yet another cruise company is spamming my elderly mother’s email address offering deals on cruises: Global Voyages Group <globalvoyagesgroup.com>. I’ve blogged previously about the large quantities of cruise- and travel-related spam to Mum. At this point I am certain that her email address has been placed on a “targeted list”. The ESP is (once again) ExactTarget.

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May
26

Spamming Householders With “Property Tax Relief” Messages

Online Property Tax Appeal, a company that offers American householders assistance in persuading their local governments to reduce their property taxes, is hitting a spamtrap and a live employee address at a firm in the UK. (My company, as a matter of fact.) It scarcely seems needful to state that neither the spamtrap nor the UK resident employee asked to receive this email. The ESP is Real Magnet.

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May
23

Cruise Companies of the World Want My Mum!

It appears that the list that Celebrity Cruises is using has itself gone on a ramble. For the past few months my mother’s email address has been inundated with email advertisements for cruises from a number of firms. The most recent is an organization in Scottsdale, Arizona (go figure!) that calls itself Our Vacation Center. The ESP is ExactTarget.

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May
09

London Theater Direct Wants an Audience

They appear to think that spamming a purchased list will provide them with one. Unfortunately, they have spammed several overworked engineers at my company, a retired nurse who lives several hundred miles north and hates to travel, and an exhausted new father in Leeds (me), along with a few actual spamtraps. If they thought that they were getting a list of London area residents, they were scammed. The ESP was IContact.

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Mar
09

I *do* Need a Mobile, But….

I don’t buy from spammers if I can help it. That is a pity, because Sony Ericcson apparently wants to sell one of their mobiles to one of my spamtraps. I couldn’t understand the email because it was not in English or any language that I recognize. The spamtrap has been dead for years. The ESP is Acxiom Digital.

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Feb
23

Yet More Travel Industry Spam to Mum

My mother’s email address is travelling extensively. I presume this is due to an email list supposed to be targeted to individuals who like to travel. Today’s installment includes the following, from a company that calls itself “Hello Travel” (hellotravel.com), which neither she nor I had ever heard of before. The ESP was Sendgrid.

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Jan
20

Hotels.com Thinks That I Need a Vacation

They’re right. 🙂 But their uncanny ability to read my mind does not justify spamming a personal email address. The ESP was ExactTarget.

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Nov
18

Celebrity Cruises Still Spamming

Celebrity Cruises still wants my mother to sign up for a cruise. She tells me that she never asked to be on their list. I believe her: she’s afraid of drowning and refuses get on any sort of boat. She’s been receiving these emails for over a year, and has never responded to any of them. The ESP is still ExactTarget.

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