American Express Spam - Anatomy of perverse marketing

American Express Spam and yet they pretend not to.

I had this email ...

From: American Express
Date: 15 September 2009 07:32:08 BST
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: A recommendation from your friend

Advert pushing credit cards and BA Miles with links directly back to AMEX servers for the images and links
... snip

Using links to images with URL tracking like

href="http://email.americanexpress.com/a/hBKnJxXXQB6DpBQKfauDq$NQN.AQB6Dpx0/amex4?MGM_URN=AAAAEgwfEhMeAg==" target="_blank" img name="bacc_mgmee_r3_c4"

Some headers:

Return-path:
Envelope-to: XXXXX@dsl.pipex.com
Delivery-date: Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:32:13 +0100
Received: from mk-filter-7.mail.uk.tiscali.com ([212.139.137.134])
by mk-delivery-2.b2b.uk.tiscali.com with esmtp (Exim 4.69)
(envelope-from )
id 1MnRaG-000DGI-To
for XXXXXX@dsl.pipex.com; Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:32:13 +0100
-Trace: 1261959694/mk-filter-7.mail.uk.tiscali.com/ListenerSBRS/$ACCEPTED/UNKNOWNLIST/72.1.201.196/4.5/noreply@emailreferral.co.uk
X-SBRS: 4.5

The email address that this spam was sent to is technical posting address and has no personal correspondence. This was not a referral this is just mailing list spam.

The domain name is freshly registered "Registered on: 06-Sep-2009" there is no web site or referral business there.
Notes as well that this "Registrant type: UK Individual" just so happens to have a PoBox address.




To put a cherry on top you can see using Google that Amex have paid for adverts to be served when you search for the return address. noreply@emailreferral.co.uk

























Another deceiving financial Institution.

Gannett