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.


Rate this comment as insightful
Rate this comment as funny
You have rated this comment as insightful
You have rated this comment as funny
Flag this comment as abusive/trolling/spam
You have flagged this comment
The first word has already been claimed
The last word has already been claimed
Insightful Lightbulb icon Funny Laughing icon Abusive/trolling/spam Flag icon Insightful badge Lightbulb icon Funny badge Laughing icon Comments icon

Comments on “Politicians Still Vote For Spamming Voters”

Subscribe: RSS Leave a comment
11 Comments
chris (profile) says:

political spam works both ways

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.

me, myself, and i says:

Re: Re: Two

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

Xanius says:

Re: Re: Re: Two

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.

anonymous coward says:

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.

jeff Houser (profile) says:

Politicians are expempt from Do Not Call List too

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.

Add Your Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here

Comment Options:

Make this the or (get credits or sign in to see balance) what's this?

What's this?

Techdirt community members with Techdirt Credits can spotlight a comment as either the "First Word" or "Last Word" on a particular comment thread. Credits can be purchased at the Techdirt Insider Shop »

Follow Techdirt

Techdirt Daily Newsletter

Techdirt Deals
Techdirt Insider Discord
The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...
Loading...