Tag44: Spamming For Jobs

It’s time for another entry in the Email Hall of Shame.

Tag44 has been emailing me for a while, hoping I’m in a hiring mood. Well, I am, as it happens. But I don’t hire people from unsolicited email.

So, let’s start with the email:

Received: from unknown [59.145.225.132] (EHLO icbupd02.amtelindia.com) by p02c12m025.mxlogic.net (mxl_mta-5.5.0-2) with ESMTP id 4ff03284.3515251632.5828.00-022.p02c12m025.mxlogic.net (envelope-from ); Thu, 08 May 2008 08:36:36 -0600 (MDT)
Received: from ENCIRCLEN20 ([192.168.3.81]) by icbupd02.amtelindia.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.6713); Thu, 8 May 2008 11:08:01 -0500
Organization: TAG44
Reply-To: katrina.getz@tag44.com
Message-ID:
From: Katrina Getz
To:
Subject: Mickey, Check the Active Candidates Matching with your Current Hiring Needs
Date: Thu, 8 May 2008 11:37:08 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=”windows-1252″
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Return-Path: katrina.getz@tag44.com
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 08 May 2008 16:08:01.0207 (UTC)
FILETIME=[redacted]

Hello Mickey,

“April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land.” These opening lines from The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot set the stage for transformation. In this time of economic and sociopolitical uncertainty one thing is for sure; business will not stop to smell the roses or Lilacs as it were, and neither can you. “May” should be the month you start building new, and maintaining existing, relationships that are paramount to continued professional growth. Take a moment to peruse the
candidates highlighted below. You may just discover someone with whom you can develop a new relationship to ensure your business continues to grow in the right direction.

*_TECHNICAL CANDIDATES & SOFTWARE SALES PROFESSIONALS_*

[redacted information about candidates]
Thank you for your time. Let me know about your interest and our “Client Relationship Manager” *Arthur Rowa* or I will get in touch to facilitate your request. If you have any queries, you can contact us at *800-322-0091*. Our company would like to establish a relationship with you and your company.

Regards

Katrina Getz

Client Relationship Manager

Tag44

Phone: 1-800-322-0091

Fax: 305-470-2700

Email: katrina.getz@tag44.com

Website: www.tag44.com

Note: We respect your Online Privacy. This is not an unsolicited mail. Under Bills 1618 Title III passed by the 105th U. S. Congress this mail cannot be considered Spam as long as we include Contact information and a method to be removed from our mailing list. If you are not interested in receiving our E-mails then please reply with a “remove” in the subject line and mention all the E-mail addresses to be removed with any E-mail addresses which might be diverting the E-mails to you. I am sorry for the inconvenience

Confidentiality Note: This email (and all attachments) is intended only for the individual(s) or company to whom it is addressed and may contain information which is privileged, confidential, and prohibited from disclosure or unauthorized use. If the recipient of this transmission is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, any form or reproduction, dissemination, copying, disclosure, modification, distribution, or publication of this transmission or its contents is strictly prohibited. Please contact me by phone or reply email, if you have received this in error.

Ok, let’s start at the bottom. The “Confidentiality Note” is not worth the paper it is printed upon. There is nothing in this solicitation that is privileged, or confidential, or that should be prohibited from disclosure. I certainly didn’t receive this in error. It’s got my name on it. This is a fun game that spammers play, hoping that recipients will be scared away from reporting the email by virtue of the confidentiality notice. For a fairly good article on these things, look for Ed Foster’s.¹

Now for the fun part, the Murkowski Disclaimer.

Note: We respect your Online Privacy. This is not an unsolicited mail. Under Bills 1618 Title III passed by the 105th U. S. Congress this mail cannot be considered Spam as long as we include Contact information and a method to be removed from our mailing list. If you are not interested in receiving our E-mails then please reply with a “remove” in the subject line and mention all the E-mail addresses to be removed with any E-mail addresses which might be diverting the E-mails to you. I am sorry for the inconvenience

What? It’s not unsolicited because you included contact information and a way to be removed? In what kind of nonsensical universe does Tag44 operate in anyway?

Oh! Wait! It’s the result of the Murkowski Disclaimer. Right. I get it now. As long as you claim the protection of this bill, then we can’t call you spammers because the law makes the unsolicited magically solicited. Ok. My bad.

Or not. The Murkowski Disclaimer is as old as the hills. I can remember helping to defeat it some ten years ago.² Yes, there was a bill (S1618) introduced by Frank Murkowski (R-AK) and Robert Torricelli (D-NJ). Yes, it passed the Senate on a 99-0 vote. But, it died in the House of Representatives, where Rep. William “Billy” Tauzin (R-LA) tried to go even further, ultimately allowing spam to proliferate. So S1618 wasn’t even passed by the 105th Congress — just the Senate of that Congress. The language that eventually passed said that Congress thought that spam was becoming a problem but that they would wait and see what the industry would come up with. Any time that you see a reference to “Bill S1618″ (or, in this instance “bills 1618″) in an email as justification for it not being spam, you can just take it to the bank that it’s spam. (Those wanting a more in-depth look should seek out James Huggins’s post on the topic.³)

Now for the headers….

The email is advertising tag44.com. So, let’s start there with our list of THINGS NOT TO DO if you’re sending email:

[mickc@hagrid ~]# whois tag44.com
[Querying whois.verisign-grs.com]
[Redirected to whois.tucows.com]
[Querying whois.tucows.com]
[whois.tucows.com]
Registrant:
(UNKNOWN)
1691 NW 107th Ave
Miami, FL 33172
US

Domain name: TAG44.COM

Administrative Contact:
Costales, Fernando fernando@encirclepayments.com
1691 NW 107th Ave
Miami, FL 33172
US
3057888248
Technical Contact:
Costales, Fernando fernando@encirclepayments.com
1691 NW 107th Ave
Miami, FL 33172
US
3057888248

Unknown? The domain is registered to “(UNKNOWN)”?!?! Don’t do that. I shouldn’t have to guess who you are. And it’s a violation of the rules for registering domains. But, the addresses match with the contacts. So, let’s have a look at encirclepayments.com:

[mickc@hagrid ~]# whois encirclepayments.com
[Querying whois.verisign-grs.com]
[Redirected to whois.tucows.com]
[Querying whois.tucows.com]
[whois.tucows.com]
Registrant:
EnCircle Payments Solutions LLC
1691 N W 107th Ave
Miami, fl 33172
US

Domain name: ENCIRCLEPAYMENTS.COM

Administrative Contact:
Gajwani, Anil anil@insta-check.com
1691 N W 107th Ave
Miami, fl 33172
US
305-592-7800 Fax: 305-592-7800

Technical Contact:
Gajwani, Anil anil@insta-check.com
1691 N W 107th Ave
Miami, fl 33172
US
305-592-7800 Fax: 305-592-7800

And we have a bit of a mismatch on the technical contacts, but the address remains constant. So, let’s have a look at insta-check.com:

[mickc@hagrid ~]# whois insta-check.com
[Querying whois.verisign-grs.com]
[Redirected to whois.tucows.com]
[Querying whois.tucows.com]
[whois.tucows.com]
Registrant:
Insta-Check
1691 NW 107 Avenue
Miami, FL 33172
US

Domain name: INSTA-CHECK.COM

Administrative Contact:
Costales, Fernando fernando@encirclepayments.com
1691 NW 107 Avenue
Miami, FL 33172
US
+1.3055927800
Technical Contact:
Costales, Fernando fernando@encirclepayments.com
1691 NW 107 Avenue
Miami, FL 33172
US
+1.3055927800

And so we come full circle. (*snicker*) Sorry, I couldn’t resist the play on words.

Anyway, here’s the relevant received line that tells us where the email is coming from:

Received: from unknown [59.145.225.132] (EHLO icbupd02.amtelindia.com) by p02c12m025.mxlogic.net (mxl_mta-5.5.0-2) with ESMTP id 4ff03284.3515251632.5828.00-022.p02c12m025.mxlogic.net (envelope-from ); Thu, 08 May 2008 08:36:36 -0600 (MDT)

[mickc@hagrid ~]# host 59.145.225.132
Host 132.225.145.59.in-addr.arpa. not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)

Lack of rDNS is not a good thing for delivery. So, here’s the whois record for the IP:

[mickc@hagrid ~]# whois 59.145.225.132
[Querying whois.apnic.net]
[whois.apnic.net]
% [whois.apnic.net node-2]
% Whois data copyright terms http://www.apnic.net/db/dbcopyright.html

inetnum: 59.145.225.128 – 59.145.225.143
netname: amtelexports1339-bdq
descr: Encircle Exports India,Baroda
descr: 704-706,Windsor Plaza,
descr: R.C.Dutt Road,
descr: Baroda
descr: Gujarat
descr: India
descr: Contact Person: Chirag.J. Patel
descr: Email: chirag@amtel.soft.net
descr: Phone:912652339058
country: IN
admin-c: NA40-AP
tech-c: NA40-AP
mnt-by: MAINT-IN-BBIL
status: ASSIGNED NON-PORTABLE
changed: rar.data@airtel.in 20051118
source: APNIC

route: 59.145.225.0/24
descr: BHARTI-IN
descr: Bharti Airtel Limited
descr: Class A ISP in INDIA .
descr: 234 , OKHLA PHASE III ,
descr: NEW DELHI
descr: INDIA
country: IN
origin: AS9498
mnt-by: MAINT-IN-BBIL
changed: rar.data@airtel.in 20070814
source: APNIC

person: Network Administrator
nic-hdl: NA40-AP
e-mail: techsupport@airtel.in
address: Bharti Airtel Ltd.
address: ISP Division – AES Carrier
address: 234 ,
address: Okhla Ind. Area,
address: Phase III
address: New Delhi,
address: INDIA-110020
phone: +91-11- 4161 5050
fax-no: +91-11- 4171 1050
country: IN
changed: rar.data@airtel.in 20070403
mnt-by: MAINT-IN-BBIL
source: APNIC

So, this email is coming from Florida to me via India. That’s not confidence-inspiring. So, why, I wonder, is the email itself not coming from tag44.com’s servers? If tag44.com is owned by a payments processor (which is an odd business choice for someone trying to find people work), you’d think they could afford their own servers. But, no. Instead, this company from Miami, Florida, is sending mail from India. Maybe electrons in India are cheaper or something.

Footnotes

1. Ed Foster, Ed Foster’s Gripelog || Comments Confidentially, E-Mail Disclaimers Are Just Dumb, (2008), https://web.archive.org/web/20080705232018/http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/comments/2007/7/19/84040/3002/0/post (last visited May 8, 2008). ↩︎
2. Deborah Scoblionkov, The Great Pink-Out, Wired (2009), https://web.archive.org/web/20090608051426/http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1998/05/12628 (last visited May 8, 2008). ↩︎
3. James Huggins, Spam and the Law – S. 1618 and H.R. 4176, James S. Huggins’ Refrigerator Door (Apr. 17, 2008), https://web.archive.org/web/20080417192026/http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/tek1/spam_and_law.htm (last visited May 8, 2008). ↩︎