Is Amazon.Com Selling E-mail Addresses?

A worried Anonymous Coward asks: "I recently used Amazon(.co.uk)'s refer-a-friend scheme to refer a member of my family. I set up a new e-mail address for this purpose, and it had been used for nothing else. A few days after receiving the refer-a-friend voucher, the address started to receive spam mail. Only Amazon ever knew about this address? How did the address get on junk mail lists? The address was too obscure to have been guessed! Has anyone else had a similar experience?" You may think most eCommerce places won't stoop as low enough to sell addresses to potential spammers, but it always pays to read the fine print, first. More below.

According to Amazon.Co.Uk's Privacy Policy: "Amazon.co.uk does not sell, trade or rent your personal information to others. We may choose to do so in the future with trustworthy third parties, but you can tell us not to by sending a blank e-mail message to never@amazon.co.uk. (If you use more than one e-mail address to shop with us, send this message from each e-mail account you use.) Also, Amazon.co.uk may provide aggregate statistics about our customers, sales, traffic patterns and related site information to reputable third-party vendors, but these statistics will include no personally identifying information."

Comments

Amazon isn't spamming

[anticypher]

It is merely selling your address to "approved" business partners, you agreed to that by accessing their site. Its those partners who are increasing their revenue by selling your address to spam lists. See, any marketing genius could spot the difference :-|

I've done the exact same thing as Worried Anonymous Coward (WAnCo?), where I set up a number of lengthy and obfuscated email addresses on a free mail service (let them deal with the spam). One of the addresses was used for amazon.co.uk's reference list, the others were never given out. Within hours the amazon account started receiving spam, the others have never received a message. I sent an email to never@amazon.co.uk from that account, but it hasn't stemmed the flow of spam.

Various "approved" amazon business partners include

Regular amazon marketing promotions

Instant diplomas for cash

Home mortgages

Make money fast with Internet Marketing (perfectly legal, it says so)

Various pr0n sites

One guy shopping his miserable resume around

I contacted the last guy from a separate account, asking him for more info and if he would like to come to work for a huge amount of money, since we needed workers in his area. When queried about how he managed to find our address, he wrote about buying a CDROM with 300,000 good, valid business addresses, all of whom had opted-in to the database. He realised after sending his resume to the first 50,000 that 90% of them bounced, and the remainder mostly generated hate mail and death threats. He was overjoyed to find a company actually interested in his spamming talents. I wonder if he is still waiting for the follow-up interview :-)

So now that address is burned onto CDs being sold to spammers everywhere. And only amazon.co.uk had ever been given the address. Its life on the internet, get used to it, information wants to be free.

the AC