Politicians Still Vote For Spamming Voters

from the but-then-it-dies-down dept

Back when politicians wrote the CAN SPAM law, they conveniently exempted political spam from the law -- so they could spam at will (and even deny that it really was spam). However, for people who do consider any unsolicited email as spam, it would appear that there was an awful lot of political spam leading up to this past Tuesday's election -- and it certainly wasn't all opt-in. The company that announced this found political spam in one of their spam honeypots, which clearly did not sign up to be alerted to political information, seeing as it's a computer, not a US voter. Political spam has only increased in the last few years, even though it seems a lot more likely to piss off voters than make them care about a particular candidate.

11 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    political spam works both ways

    icon
    chris (profile), Nov 9th, 2006 @ 12:11pm

    i'm pretty sure that congressman geoff davis from kentucky is sick of me filling out every activist web form there is from the EFF, savetheinternet, stopbigmedia, and deffectivebydesign. not to mention all the petitions and stuff. so if politicos want to spam me, they can go right ahead. i have probably spammed them *way* more.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Two

    identicon
    Spam-a-lot, Nov 9th, 2006 @ 12:21pm

    2 'wrongs' don't make a 'right'.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Nov 9th, 2006 @ 1:26pm

    They must know that I am a Canadian HoTMaiL.com (11 years) & GMail.com (3 years) user who lives in the USA (So. California, about 26 years). I had never received any of this junk mail.

    go me!!

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    Re: Anonymous Coward

    identicon
    I Like Pie, Nov 9th, 2006 @ 2:24pm

    Hotmail I can understand...nothing says "Internet Ghetto" like a hotmail.com email address.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  

    Re: Two

    identicon
    Haywood, Nov 9th, 2006 @ 2:32pm

    "2 'wrongs' don't make a 'right'."
    Of course they do.
    Remember math?
    A positive times a positive = a positive.
    A negative times a negative = a positive.
    A negative times a positive = a negative.
    The only negative is if someone screws you around and you do something nice in return.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  6.  
    identicon
    STJ, Nov 9th, 2006 @ 3:29pm

    I live in NE and got spam for both of the idiots... multiple emails infact. Somehow they have zeroed in somehow where I live.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  7.  

    Re: Re: Two

    identicon
    me, myself, and i, Nov 9th, 2006 @ 3:32pm

    but what about addition and subtraction?

    you cant multiply your time, only your productivity.
    you can add 'good deeds' and 'bad deeds'
    but you can't subtract from overall time.
    you can divide your time among different things.

    mathematical laws don't really apply to life, except cheque book balancing...

    anyway, ignore me cause i'm not making any sense to myself even

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  8.  
    identicon
    anonymous coward, Nov 9th, 2006 @ 4:14pm

    Political voicemail spam is worse than email spam of any nature.

    Politicians know that consumers hate voicemail and email spam so much that they have created legislation to protect consumers from it yet they continue to USE IT THEMSELVES.

    How incredibly incompetent do you have to be to get elected to office in the U.S.?

    I am going to start an awareness campaign called, "You call. You lose." which will warn candidates that any robot call made will resort in the recipient not voting for that office. Voters will be able to send an automated email from our website that will tell the politician that another vote was lost and will send politicians regular updates on the total number of votes lost by robocalling.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  9.  

    Re: Re: Re: Two

    identicon
    Xanius, Nov 9th, 2006 @ 4:53pm

    Ah but subtracting two negatives can equal a posotive...-1 - -2 = +1!

    I was getting unsolicited political spam in my college email account before I replied to it saying I was going to report them to CanSpam and they stopped sending it, I didn't even have to click a link to unsubscribe. Apparently the workers for politicians don't know the laws that the people they work for write.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  10.  

    Politicians are expempt from Do Not Call List too

    icon
    jeff Houser (profile), Nov 9th, 2006 @ 7:37pm

    Politicians are exempt from the (US) nationwide Do not Call Registry too.

    Up until the recent election, I was getting 3-5 calls a week from the National Republican Congressional Committee telling me not to vote for a particular candidate.

    never a real person on the other end, it was all a recorded message.

    I voted for the candidate they told me not too.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  11.  
    identicon
    cvanallen, Nov 10th, 2006 @ 10:36am

    Well the government ALWAYS follows the rules they give their people...

    Oh... wait - this is America.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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