TheRealDeal.com: Emailing Long-Dead Email Addresses
The Real Deal, a commercial real estate magazine, spammed several email addresses that had not been live for several years, and that after being re-enabled rejected all email at SMTP time for over twelve consecutive months. They used the ESP MadMimi to send their spam. The Real Deal probably purchased a list, and failed to inform MadMimi of that fact since MadMimi’s AUP/TOS forbids purchased lists.
NOTE: MadMimi’s bulk emails are normally sent from a domain with the name mimimail#.com, where # stands for a one- or two-digit number. Tagged URLs in their emails use the hosts mim.io and go.madmimi.com.
Sending IP: 207.210.122.195
Spam Sample:
Actual Headers:
Received: from mimimail16.com (mimimail16.com [207.210.122.195])
by <xxx> (Postfix) with ESMTP id <xxx>
for <xxx>; Fri, 14 Oct 2011 13:xx:xx -0500 (CDT)
DKIM-Signature: <xxx>
Received: by mimimail16.com (PowerMTA(TM) v3.5r15) id <xxx>
for <xxx>; Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:xx:xx -0400
(envelope-from <xxx>)
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:xx:xx -0400
From: The Real Deal | New York <newsletter@therealdeal.com>
Sender: The Real Deal | New York <newsletter=therealdeal.com@mimimail16.com>
To: <xxx>
Message-Id: <xxx>
Subject: The Real Deal Weekly Residential Roundup - Sharp decline in new
development sales, but prices rise /
AG fines Apthorp, halts sales, orders refunds /
Brooke Astor apartment sells at 50 percent off
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=<xxx>
Mimiaid: <xxx>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:mailman@mimimail1.com?subject=Unsubscribe <xxx>>,
<http://go.madmimi.com/opt_out?<xxx>>
Precendence: bulk
Readable Email:
From: The Real Deal | New York <newsletter@therealdeal.com>
To: <spamtrap>
Subject: The Real Deal Weekly Residential Roundup <remainder removed>
[http://www.lincolncenter.org/show_events_list.asp?eventcode=<xxx>]
[**Sharp decline in new development sales, but prices rise in Manhattan,
Brooklyn**]
(http://therealdeal.com/newyork/articles/sharp-decline-in-new-development-sales-in-manhattan-and-brooklyn-according-to-mns-report)
Though new development sales slowed severely in Manhattan and Brooklyn in recent months, prices are mostly on the upswing, according to third-quarter Manhattan and Brooklyn new development sales reports released this week by residential brokerage MNS.
<removed>
View this email on the web here:
http://mim.io/<xxx>]
Unsubscribe:
http://go.madmimi.com/opt_out?<xxx>]
You can also forward to a friend:
http://go.madmimi.com/forward/<xxx>]
The Real Deal | 158 West 29th St. 4th Floor New York, NY 10001 | (212) 260-1332
Almost two months later, this spam is still hitting the same spamtraps. I don’t think that this blog has attracted the attention of the ESP, MadMimi, yet.
This sender appears to have lists targeted at the greater New York area. However, they’re hitting spamtraps at multiple domains, including some for defunct companies and ISPs that were nowhere near New York or any part of the east coast. Since TheRealDeal.com is hitting several of my spamtraps, they are at risk of hitting multiple spamtraps in more sensitive venues, such as a blacklist.
Blacklists sometimes list an IP because of a single spamtrap hit, although in my opinion that’s not usually a good practice and it rarely seems to happen with the more widely used blacklists. Any blacklist will list an IP if they receive more than a few emails to their own spamtraps, though, and I think that they should.
I’m Sally Lehman, deliverability lead from Mad Mimi. Thanks for reporting this and I apologize that you received this mail. We happened upon your site today and we’re investigating now. We’ve contacted The Real Deal regarding this issue. If you would like to know the results of the investigation SpamBouncer, please contact us at the Mad Mimi abuse or support addresses.
Good to “see” you, Sally! It would be nice to know what happens, but why not simply post a response here? That way, everybody sees the whole investigation and resolution instead of just my spam report.
That makes the blog more useful to people, and also shows the ESP in action. A responsive ESP tends to get more complaints, paradoxically, not because responsive ESPs send more spam (they don’t) but because users don’t feel that they’re wasting their time sending the complaints. If people send you a complaint when they receive spam from one of your customers, you’ve turned a negative (spam) into a qualified positive (a feedback loop).
So when you figure out what’s up with this customer, tell us. If you need more information from me (such as a more recent spam sample), just ask.
Hey 🙂
I’d love to show our responsiveness here but I can’t publicly discuss our users.
If one of them receives a complaint, we always follow up – we hate spam 🙂
I can keep you in loop directly – please email me at sally@madmimi.com.
Emailing the ESP rep. (I do for ESPs that I trust, and a couple of people that I trust speak well not just of MadMimi but of Sally.)