this morning, my wife got what appeared to be a “legitimate” email, but it was delivered to my spam box.

here’s what i know:

it purports to be from the “Colorado State University” department of “Veterinary Continuing Education”, with the URI “CSUvetCE dot com”.

it was delivered by way of an open relay in germany, using at least two other open relays in other, eastern european countries.

my wife CLAIMS that the “Colorado State University, Department of Veterinary Continuing Education” is a legitimate business for which several of her colleagues work.

there is an EXTREMELY good chance that, if someone from the “Colorado State University, Department of Veterinary Continuing Education” were to send my wife an email message, it would come through the mailservers at colorado state university, IN COLORADO, and NOT through several open relays in other countries.

it was addressed to my wife, using an email address for ME, which i haven’t used in at least 5 years.

when i visited the “manage my subscriptions” page at “CSUvetCE dot com”, it listed my wife’s name, only her last name was in the “first name” slot, and her first name was in the “last name” slot, followed by my email address, the physical address where she works, except that instead of being on mercer island, it was listed as being in “medina”, which is a suburb of bellevue, about ten miles away from the actual address location, on the mainland. and, it listed the zip code as being the one where we currently live, which is neither mercer island, nor medina.

the same “manage my subscriptions” page has her listed as the “chief executive officer” of “at home veterinary services”. she does NOT work for “at home veterinary services”, and she is NOT the “chief executive officer”.

when i tried to change the “STATUS” of her subscription from “subscribed” to “unsubscribed”, it didn’t work. i tried it multiple times, and every time the page reloaded, the status said “subscribed”.

so i checked… “CSU” is CHICAGO state university, and their URI is “CSU.EDU”. COLORADO state university’s URI is “colostate.edu”, and the ACTUAL “Colorado State University, Department of Veterinary Continuing Education” is at “cvmbs.colostate.edu”.

now, i don’t KNOW whether or not “CSUvetCE dot com” is a spammer scam or not, but i know that EVERYTHING i have found so far leads me to the conclusion that it is a spammer scam. 😒

also i don’t know why someone would go to SO! MUCH! TROUBLE! to put together a web site that tries its DAMNEDEST to look like a legitimate business, just to lure the relatively few people who are in the veterinary industry into submitting their information to a spam list.

but, as i said… EVERYTHING i have found so far leads me to the conclusion that it’s PRECISELY what they have done…

weird.

ETA: okay, this is getting weirder now… after a bit more poking around, i found an announcement on this page which appears to indicate that CSUvetCE dot com is, in fact, a legitimate page, and not a spammer scam… which, then, makes me wonder EVEN MORE about why the email was sent via open relays to an address that had OBVIOUSLY been scraped from who knows where… like… does the Colorado State University Department of Veterinary Continuing Education care THAT LITTLE about the ethics of the emails they’re sending out? do they even CARE?? 😒

ETA, part 2: i wrote to them, asking why they have a scraped address on a form that doesn’t work. their response said they couldn’t find that address on their mailing list. i wrote back with all the details, including a screen shot and a URI to the spot they said they couldn’t find. they haven’t responded… yet…

i’m back to thinking that this might be a spammer scam masquerading as a legitimate business, and the legitimate business doesn’t have the first clue what is going on. 😒