Today I sent this email to orders@firstmfg.com, the customer support email address for First Manufacturing Co., which sells motorcycle riding gear, most notably vests and jackets:
Today I received marketing spam from info@leathernewyork.com.
The email address to which the spam was sent, [elided], which is also the address from which I am writing to you, is a unique, privacy-protecting email address which was only ever given to First Manufacturing Company, specifically when I placed orders through your website in March 2025.
I have reviewed your privacy policy and it discloses nothing about you sharing customer email addresses with third parties so they can send me spam.
I wonder, then, if you can please explain to me how leathernewyork.com got this email address, and how this could possibly be OK.
Thank you,
Jonathan Kamens
Literally one minute later, I received this reply:
Hi Jonathan,
We are sorry for the concern this caused. We understand why receiving marketing email at an address you only used with us would feel like a privacy issue.
Based on our published privacy information, we do share personal information with certain third parties that help operate our store, including Shopify and Google Analytics. Our privacy information also says we may use order information to communicate with you and to provide information or advertising about products or services.
That said, we do not have information here that explains the specific path for how leathernewyork.com obtained your address or whether that sender was using data shared directly by us. We cannot verify that from the information available to us.
If you would like, please forward the full email headers from the message you received so we can review the source more closely.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
First Manufacturing Company,
Customer Support by AI
Call: (800)-537-3030
I sent back the following:
Please escalate this ticket to a human being. I do not wish an AI to reply to me again.
I am sure there are human beings at First Manufacturing Company who know how leathernewyork.com got their hands on my email address.
I am equally sure that this information is not shared with the AI that responds to customer support inquiries.
I do not want to deal with an AI, I want to deal with a human being.
I hope I have made myself clear.
this is after the quote
A minute later the AI replied again, disregarding my explicit statement that I did not want the AI to reply to me again:
Hi Jonathan,
I totally understand why you want a human review for this, especially since you believe the email address you received spam at was shared only with us when you ordered.
From our published privacy information, we do share personal information with certain third parties that help operate our store (for example, Shopify and Google Analytics), and we may use order information to communicate with you and provide information or advertising about products or services. However, the details available in this channel do not explain the specific path for how leathernewyork.com obtained your address in this case, or whether the sender used data shared directly by us.
A human teammate is going to take over now so they can look into what happened on your specific case.
Please forward the full email headers from the spam email you received so they can review the source more precisely.
Thanks for your patience as we escalate this.
First Manufacturing Company,
Customer Support by AI
Call: (800)-537-3030
I guess now we will have to wait and see if I actually get a response from a human being and if they actually admit to selling my email address without my consent in violation of their own privacy policy.
