| This is getting ridiculous. As we noted earlier, all mail for every one of Roger Stone's sham email campaigns, NYFacts.net, SpitzerFile.com , W.J.Mahoney Republican Club as well as his own website, use something called "linkedcampaign.com" to spew their email forth.
Return-Path: (update@nyfacts.net)
Received: from linkedcampaign.com (linkedcampaign.com [24.199.182.6])
Return-Path: (Stone@StoneZONE.com)
Received: from linkedcampaign.com (linkedcampaign.com [24.199.182.6])
Return-Path: (info@SpitzerFile.com)
Received: from linkedcampaign.com (linkedcampaign.com [24.199.182.6])
Return-Path: (WJMAHONEY@GOP-CLUB.COM)
Received: from linkedcampaign.com (linkedcampaign.com [24.199.182.6])
"Linkedcapaign.com" was registered, as were every one of the other domains using a service called Domains by Proxy, which allows users to register domains in such a way as to obscure their identities.
When Bouldin and I were researching "linkedcampaign.com" we found that that particular domain redirected to a site for a company called Vertical Response, an email marketing company. We were puzzled as to why a seemingly perfectly legit company would resort to using a service like Domains by Proxy to obscure details about who runs such a site.
We were right to wonder because Vertical Response did no such thing. Roger Stone did. Stone is redirecting his own creation, "linkedcampaign", to Vertical Response and the Vertical Response folks aren't too happy about it. Here's their Director of Policy enforcement the comments:
I'm the Director of Policy Enforcement at VerticalResponse. This post was just brought to my attention, and I want to state for the record that we have nothing to do with this linkedcampaign.com company. Their web page redirects to ours currently, but I can only assume this is being done with the goal of deflecting blame for their spam on to us (an owner of a domain can redirect that domain to point anywhere they want). I cannot stress enough that Linked Campaign is not a service we provide.
The kind of emails you're describing could not make it out through our system. There are several reasons for this:
1. We do not allow domain spoofing. All mail sent through our service must come through our mail.vresp.com domain. The only time we make exceptions for this rule is when a client works with our engineering team to give us permission to send mail on behalf of one of their subdomains. Jumping from domain to domain is simply not possible with our system.
2. We do not own the 24.199.182.6 IP Address (Road Runner owns that IP, and they are not one of our upstream providers. This means the email has been going through Road Runner).
3. We have very strict rules in place regarding the sending of mail. Our clients may only mail those people who have specifically requested info from or about their company. Nothing else is allowed. Signing people up through one site and mailing them information about another is prohibited. If they even managed to get one email out through our site it would almost certainly lead to complaints (we respond to all complaints) and the account would be banned.
You can read our anti-spam policy here:
http://www.verticalr...
The linkedcampaign.com whois page shows their info as being protected by "Domains by Proxy" as you noted. I am contacting Domains by Proxy to see what we can do to get their contact info and get this spammer domain pointed away from our site.
I would really appreciate it you could forward some of their emails to me: richard at verticalresponse.com. I would also appreciate it if the post could be corrected to show we were not involved with this issue. I am happy to discuss this by phone or email if you write me.
Thanks!
So "linkedcampaign" far from being a legitimate service, is exactly what it says it is and a far cry from all the asertions that all of these different efforts were independent of each other. It's right there in the name that Stone himself chose for the endeavour, "linked campaign".
Roger Stone is a liar and a sick, sad sleaze. |
