So.. imagine my surprise when I looked at the referrers to my website.
https://cscentral-eu.amazon.com/gp/stores/www.amazon.co.uk
/gp/communications/issue-manager/ref=csc_ho_communica_issuemanager
_1/278-9724503-5873838?commType=Email&customerEmailAddress=
redREDACTEDsteve%40hotmail.com&initialCommId=A2QVLXSTW05AJG
&isCommLaunch=1&marketplaceID=3
&searchByContactID=1&usecaseSessionID=3186078922
Say what?!
I’ve redacted part of the address but the referrer stats show the full customer contact e-mail address.
This is astonishing. I presume a customer services rep within Amazon has clicked on a link, supplied by their customer, to my website and the browser (as they do) supplied by website with the referring URL.
The bad thing is – the referring URL contains the direct email address of the customer who raised the query.
I e-mailed the hotmail address and asked if they had been in touch with Amazon! The person had raised a customer services query with Amazon and had referenced to one of my articles.
Notes: This probably only works if the destination website is an https site. Browsers often don’t sent referral information when going https (amazon customer services portal) to http (non-ssl website).
I am quite amazed that no webstats containing these kinds of referrals have ended up being indexed by google.
