U.S. banking giant Citibank yesterday sent bulk email about “thank you” rewards points to a new spamtrap that has been dead for over eight years. The email contained a name and the last four digits of a credit card number. As with previous Citibank bulk emails that I have seen and blogged about, the ESP is Epsilon Interactive via its ESP Bigfoot Interactive.
First Chase Bank sent marketing emails that contained personal names and credit card information to spamtraps. Now Citibank is doing the same thing. Today Citibank sent a bulk marketing email to an email address that, if it ever existed at all, has been closed since 2007. The email contained a name and the last four digits of a credit card number. Either Citibank is deliberately including made-up “customer” information to make bulk marketing email look more legitimate (which I doubt), or Citibank has badly mismanaged its customer list *AND* (worse) is including sensitive personal information in marketing emails that are going to unconfirmed and incorrect email addresses. The ESP is Epsilon Interactive via its ESP Bigfoot Interactive.