Miller hunts down people who use throwaway emails on their contests

By Cory Doctorow at 5:25 am Saturday, Feb 18

Regina sez, "I filled out a web form for a contest from Miller using a throwaway junk email address and then, months after I dumped the throwaway account, I got this to my main account! Not sure I like the idea of companies tracking me down like this."

Thank you for being a loyal consumer of Miller Brewing Company. As one of our VIP consumers, you have likely received email communications from us in the past. Recently, however, we have not been able to deliver email messages to the address you originally supplied. We have performed an electronic change of address to update our records so that we can continue to send you special offers, promotions, and announcements via email.

Link

Update: Brian McWilliams, author of the great book Spam Kings, has done more investigation into this pernicious spamming technique, "Turns out this spooky little spam was the work of Equifax, the big credit reporting agency that shut down its Boca Raton-based spam operation, Naviant, in 2003, due to the impending passage of CAN-SPAM."