About 3 months ago I received a newsletter email on a list I am subscribed to, however, unfortunately this time the sender had stuffed up and sent their entire list c/c'd.

Shortly after, I received a marketing email from a NZ company who I had never had any dealings with. Those morons also sent it out c/c'd. Myself and the rest of their victims received every response the recipients sent back reply-to-all.

I put 2-and-2 together and it didn't take long to find a match in the legit newsletter c/c list. I wrote to the sender advising them of the actions of this company.

Fast forward to yesterday and this company is at it again. I did not receive the original email because I had blocked the sender but I (and all their other victims) received another bunch of terse responses from people annoyed about being spammed. It seems email harvesting is this company's modus operandi.

I contacted Open Host and to cut a long story short they clearly have their heads in the sand - apparently believing their customer's baloney tale - and their CSR was quite arrogant about it.

Which is quite odd, because I also contacted their customer, to whom I had some very robust things to say - and their customer had no compunction about laying the blame squarely on Open Host for the predicament they found themselves in (note: it sounded like I was one of many callers to them that afternoon).

At this point I would normally just spam score all mail (from Open Host) on every mail server I administer as an appropriate consequence for their belligerence, however, this is a particularly nasty issue because most of the 'noise' is coming from other mail servers used by the victims of their client.

I called back and tried to escalate this matter within Open Host to no avail. I don't expect any easy answers but this is as much to voice my discontent about Open Host.