MainSleaze

Online retailing giant Amazon is emailing its “Amazon Local” advertising emails, which are customized by customer location, to every customer that it has until that customer opts out. Among those are several dozen of my spamtraps, most of which are pristine or obvious typos and were never active email addresses. Amazon is sending these emails through its own Amazon SES SMTP relay service.

I don’t usually shop at Amazon, but a family member bought me a gift card there for Christmas, so I did. I have a tagged address with Amazon that I leave mostly disabled at the router, and re-enable only when I must shop there. That address was unsubscribed from all Amazon bulk emails whatsoever when I created it. That email address receives Amazon Local spam. I wasn’t paying attention while the account was disabled and rejecting email, so I don’t know for sure when the Amazon Local email started.

Amazon does not spam purchased or email appended lists. If you’ve never done business with them, and nobody happens to typo or forge your email address when doing business with them, you’re safe. However, Amazon has the worst email practices and least manners of any large company that I have ever done business with.

Sending IPs: 54.240.12.0-54.240.16.255

Spam Sample:

Actual Headers:

Received: from <xxx>.smtp-out.amazonses.com (<xxx>.smtp-out.amazonses.com [54.240.##.##])
        by <xxx> (Postfix) with ESMTP id <xxx>
        for <xxx>; Thu, 14 Aug 2014 13:##:## +0000 (UTC)
DKIM-Signature: <xxx>
DKIM-Signature: <xxx>
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 13:##:## +0000
From: Amazon Local <LocalDeals@amazon.com>
To: <xxx>
Message-ID: <<xxx>@email.amazonses.com>
Subject: Office Space Access | <xxx>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
        boundary="----=_Part_<xxx>"
Bounces-to: <xxx>@bounces.amazon.com
X-AMAZON-MAIL-RELAY-TYPE: subscription
X-AMAZON-RTE-VERSION: 2.0
X-Original-MessageID: <<xxx>@<xxx>.massmail-sender-na-<xxx>.amazon.com>
X-SES-Outgoing: <xxx>
Feedback-ID: <xxx>

Readable Email:

From: Amazon Local <LocalDeals@amazon.com>
To: <spamtrap>
Subject: Office Space Access | <xxx>

Los Angeles

Half-Day Office Space and Business Lounge Access
Regus Business Centers

<removed>

This message was sent to the following email address: <xxx>. Not interested in Amazon Local emails? It’s easy to unsubscribe.
http://local.amazon.com/<xxx>
Be sure to add LocalDeals@amazon.com to your address book or safe senders list so our emails get to your inbox.

This email was sent from a notification-only email address that cannot accept incoming email. (c) 2014 Amazon Local or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Amazon Local and the Amazon Local logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. Amazon Local, 410 Terry Avenue N., Seattle, WA 98109-5210. Reference: <xxx>