Amazon Spam?

Posted by Pierre Igot in: Technology
August 19th, 2003 • 5:57 am

I am a long-time customer of Amazon.com and, more recently, of their Canadian store. I’m generally quite pleased with the service. However, today I received the following email:

From: “Amazon.ca” Date: Lund août 18, 2003 9:20:59 PM Canada/Atlantic
Subject: ORDER “The Simpsons: The Complete Third Season” Today!

Greetings from Amazon.ca!

As someone who has purchased a “The Simpsons” DVD in the past, you might
like to know another episode, “The Simpsons: The Complete Third Season,”
will be released on August 26, 2003, on DVD. You can now pre-order your
copy at a savings of 30% by following the link below…

The trouble is that I’ve never ordered a Simpsons DVD in my life, either from Amazon.ca or from any other online store.

The lenient view would be that this is just a glitch in the system — I might have ordered a DVD of a movie with an actor whose last name is “Simpsons”.

The not-so-lenient view would be that these “personalized” promotional messages are getting dangerously close to good old spam…


2 Responses to “Amazon Spam?”

  1. Forged Address says:

    Dude, it’s possible to forge the From: address of an email. It
    might not even have been sent by Amazon. Since you didn’t post
    the full message, it’s hard to know for certain.

  2. Pierre Igot says:

    I know about possible forgeries and did check the legitimacy of this email before posting this item. Further proof is that Amazon replied to my complaint about this email as well.

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