A lot of spam email is sent from one country to another using fake 'from' addresses which makes it practically impossible to trace the sender. Often the email will feature a link to a website but the information that can be gleaned from the URLs used often leads to semi-anonymous domain registrations and hosting accounts. In short, tracking the sources is most often a waste of time.
However, emails like ones I'm receiving indirectly from North Staffs Leasing are form the same county, (UK), and include some information that seem to be genuine, so there should be some way of stopping it or at least lodging a complaint with the relevant ISP.
The latest email that I'm looking at has come from and the WHOIS info on this domain shows:
Registrant:
clampfords
Humber Road
Ellesmere Port
Cheshire, CH66 2SH
GB
A search on Google for 'North Staffs Leasing' finds a website at www.nsleasing.net, and this domain name's WHOIS shows:
nsleasing.net
H&A Web Solutions Ltd
4, Huntley Avenue
Penkhull
Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire ST4 5EL
UK
The nsleasing.net website has a 'designed-by' link to www.hawebsolutions.com and both the nsleasing.net and hawebsolutions.com sites are hosted on Heart Internet IP addresses.
The hawebsolutions.com site doesn't actually have a home-page which suggests it's either completely bogus or has been removed to avoid people being able to track down the outfit sending out the spam email.
The hawebsolutions.com domain is registered to:
H&A Web Solutions Ltd
unit 3
emerald way
stone business park, Staffordshire ST15 0SR
GB
A different address this time, but there is a company listed on the Companies House website as:
H AND A WEB SOLUTIONS LIMITED
UNIT 3, EMERALD WAY
STONE BUSINESS PARK
STONE
STAFFORDSHIRE
ST15 0SR
... interestingly the company's status is listed as "Active - Proposal to Strike off".
Well, as it appears that it's H AND A WEB SOLUTIONS LIMITED that is actually sending the spam, rather than the North Staffs Leasing, (who are presumably paying for it to be sent), our best bet would appear to be to lodge a complaint with the ISP that hosts the from address domain, marketleadsuk.com. However, the IP address is 66.79.183.1 which is allocated to 'Managed Solutions Group, Inc' in Fremont California and this outfit looks like a dodgy, bogus spam-house.
With the trail back to the senders of the spam leading down a blind alley, the only other option seems to be to complain to the ISP of the North Staffs Leasing website, Heart Internet, as while they're not actually sending the email themselves, they are clearly complicit.
The Companies House record for 'NORTH STAFFS LEASING LIMITED' has their address as:
UNIT 3 EMERALD WAY
STONE BUSINESS PARK
STONE
STAFFORDSHIRE
ST15 0SR
As this is the same as H AND A WEB SOLUTIONS LIMITED it looks as though the two organisations are in fact one and the same. I.e. NORTH STAFFS LEASING seem to have created their own fake web-development company to send spam on their behalf presumably as a way of protecting themselves and their website, and to deny direct liability.
I think that it is fairly safe to assume that the hosts of the systems that send the spam emails themselves are happy to be party these nefarious activities - for a fee no doubt, so the only remaining option seems to be to contact the host of the website that would benefit from the spam.
The host of the www.nsleasing.net is Heart Internet, (www.heartinternet.co.uk), based in Nottingham. I've contacted them today with my view that as there are strong links between North Staffs Leasing and the spam, the nsleasing.net website itself contravenes Heart's Terms and Conditions. Their reaction will be posted here - of there is one. However, I'm slightly surprised that the nsleasing.net site is hosted in the UK and even if Heart take steps to protect their reputation and threaten the North Staffs gang with closure, I expect the site would show up hosted somewhere close to where the spam comes from.
I don't have high hopes for stopping this stream of spam, but publishing something about a particular spammy organisation had eased the frustration a little, and hopefully, as this post gets picked up by Google, it might help others who are in the same boat.
For more information about tracing spam email, looking up IP addresses and their owners, please email me via mjbdata.co.uk.