Even Facebook's Not Too Big to Spam

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Bob Sybydlo on June 18, 2012 9:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Spamhaus, an organization dedicated to tracking and fightingspam, apparently does not "Like" Facebook's recent email campaigns, and theyhave listed over 30 of the social media giant's sending IP addresses on theirmost predominant blacklist - the SBL (Spamhaus Block List).  Spamhaus stated that Facebook has beensending "spam" emails to new potential Facebook users on behalf of their currentusers and asking them to "Join Facebook". Unfortunately for Facebook, a lot of the email addresses they targetedturned out to be spam traps, and in some cases, these were addresses that havebeen dead for over 10 years, before Facebook even existed. 

Spamhaus' definition of "Spam" is Unsolicited BulkEmail.  This means they are looking outfor emails that are both Bulk(newsletters, customer communication, enquiries, etc.) and Unsolicited (emails sent to recipients who have not granted thatspecific sender the explicit permission to contact them).

Since the late 90s, Spamhaus has been tracking abundantamounts of unmanned email accounts called Spam Traps to track who is in factsending unsolicited bulk email.  It hasbeen surmised that in some cases these trap email addresses are old emailaccounts that have been turned "dead", or have been deactivated.  It has also been considered that these trapaccounts have been created and opted into email collection forums and websitesfor the purposes of tracking which marketers get a hold of them and send "unsolicited"email (as defined above).  When thesetraps begin receiving "spam", the sender gets blocked by Spamhaus.

Every day, Spamhaus blocks and lists IPs that are beingutilized by bot-nets, Trojans, malware software, and scan gang to send "spam". However,Spamhaus is also occasionally blocking well-known businesses as well as EmailService providers that knowingly or unknowingly send Unsolicited Bulk Email.Spamhaus does not "like" spam.

No matter what the business is or how big their brand nameis, if their email program is sending Bulkand Unsolicited messages to Spamhaus'spam traps they will be blocked. Going back to Facebook, the biggest social media network around, as soonas they began sending Bulk email to Spam Traps they were blocked withoutexception.  While Facebook boasts over900 million active users, Spamhaus actively protects over 1.7 billion mailboxes.

For a blacklist to actually be effective, an InternetService Provider has to adopt its use in their email filtration/security system,and Spamhaus has a lot of "followers" who are subscribed to its blacklistingservice, including Yahoo, Hotmail, GMAIL, AOL, Comcast, Road Runner, andEarthLink. An additional 110,000 B2C, corporate, and personal domains worldwideare also checking the Spamhaus block list when they are receiving email.  For Facebook this means that while blocked,their campaigns will not reach any email inboxes since their messages will beblocked outright.

Several postmaster accounts that I monitor receivedliterally dozens of these requests to "join Facebook".  None of these postmaster accounts are signedup for Facebook or subscribed to receive communication of any kind fromFacebook.  Spamhaus' argument here isthat since these users have not actually joined Facebook, they have not giventheir consent to receive any communication from Facebook.  This is a great example of the types ofissues an email program can run into when attempting to contact a large groupof potential users (customers) while not having the explicit consent to contactthem.  If it can happen to Facebook, itcan happen to anybody - and it does...every day!

Let us know in the comments if you've encountered issueswith sending "unsolicited bulk email" i.e. spam or if you've received it fromFacebook.

Image courtesy of Sean MacEntee

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