Why The GOP Wants To Break Your Spam Filter: GOP Candidate Tricked Gullible Voters Into Funding Him With Misleading Spam Emails
from the the-gop-takes-you-all-for-suckers dept
Over the last few months we’ve been covering this bizarre story of how Republican politicians, pushed by their preferred spamming provider (which misrepresented a study on how email providers treat political spam), have been falsely claiming that Google is “censoring” their political emails. They’ve also been pushing a law that would require email providers not to label politician emails as spam. In response, Google caved a bit and proposed a new offering that would whitelist political campaigns, keeping them out of the spam filter (but including a button at the top asking the recipient if they want to unsubscribe from that mailing). Google asked the Federal Election Commission (FEC), to bless this idea (and specifically to note it wouldn’t be deemed to violate any campaign finance laws).
As we just noted, the public absolutely hates this idea, and their comments to the FEC reflect a visceral hatred towards (1) spam, and (2) politicians who seek to write laws that exempt themselves from laws against spamming.
In other words, this is a deeply unpopular idea that Republicans are pushing because their own digital marketing agency is so bad at crafting emails that don’t look like spam that they have to resort to special laws to keep spamming you.
Indeed, as we noted in some of our coverage, Republican politicians have a long history of especially spam-like emails, which seem designed specifically to dupe gullible people — often older people — out of money.
And now there’s a new story suggesting that this appears to be getting even worse. A Republican candidate for Congress in Florida, Erick Aguilar, has raised a tremendous amount of money by sending email spams pretending to be campaign emails from more popular politicians: Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.
Seriously.
In his pursuit of Florida’s 4th Congressional District, Aguilar has used WinRed, a popular platform Republicans employ to process campaign contributions, to send a flurry of fundraising emails. But the solicitations did not mention Aguilar’s campaign or his leading competitor in the Aug. 23 primary, state Sen. Aaron Bean, who has the support of much of the state’s GOP establishment.
Instead, the messages were written in a way that suggested donations would actually go toward more prominent GOP politicians, including the former president, the governor or Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan.
“Governor DeSantis is always fighting back against Corrupt Left,” read one email that came under a logo using DeSantis’ name. “No matter how bad this country is the Fake News media and Biden Admin are OBSESSED with that [sic] Florida is doing.”
It added: “It is time to help America’s #1 Governor. Can we count on you to support DeSantis?”
It appears that these tactics have worked, with gullible Trump/DeSantis supporters filling Aguilar’s campaign coffers… without even realizing it.
The move appeared to have worked — particularly among retired older donors from across the country. Some of Aguilar’s WinRed emails, such as the one about DeSantis, went out in November, just before the Jacksonville-based candidate’s campaign saw nearly 16 times as much cash come in in December, campaign finance records show. Yet some of the people who sent contributions had no idea they were giving to Aguilar.
“I don’t know that name,” Pat Medford, an 88-year-old from Minnesota, said in an interview when asked about her donations to Aguilar. “I, of course, give to President Trump and DeSantis, but that’s really it. I don’t give to many others, and that name [Aguilar] is not familiar to me.”
Despite not knowing him, records show Medford gave 30 separate contributions to Aguilar’s campaign through WinRed, totaling more than $1,000.
So, let’s be clear here. Under the GOP bill proposed by John Thune and Google’s proposed pilot program, it appears these emails could not be filtered as spam. They are coming from a legitimate candidate for federal office. That they are misleading and extraordinarily spammy doesn’t much matter to these Republicans, it seems. That these Republicans have to resort to such scammy techniques to dupe gullible voters out of so much money doesn’t matter.
All that seems to matter is that they want more cash from their base, and they consider this the best way to keep Google from actually protecting people.
Filed Under: donald trump, dupes, erick aguilar, gop, john thune, ron desantis, scams, spam, spam filters
Companies: google, targeted victory
Comments on “Why The GOP Wants To Break Your Spam Filter: GOP Candidate Tricked Gullible Voters Into Funding Him With Misleading Spam Emails”
Misleading is one way to call it
A better description is fraud.
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Agreed. Aguilar should be on trial for what he did and political emails shouldn’t have been carved out from the CAN-SPAM Act.
Don’t just add an “Unsubscribe” button. Add an “Unsubscribe and Return to Sender” button.
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So this guy raised massive amounts of money from a public that YOU say hates all spam emails to the point of not responding or even opening them?
You’re kidding, right?
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Did you not read the article?
Not everybody is computer savvy enough to know what is SPAM and was isn’t.
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Did you not read the article?
This wasn’t about people being fooled because they weren’t computer savvy, it was about people being defrauded out of money by a politician scam artist.
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You don’t know how spam and scams work, do you.
Keep in mind, this is the same John Thune who told CNN that killing prairie dogs with an AR-15 was more important than protecting children from being slaughtered by those same AR-15s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-Txtk_N5Ps
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Yes, spray the Plague everywhere with blood and gib splatter, and drive another animal to extinction.
How is that not more important than something something children dead whatever?
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And what about the assholes that can’t tell the difference between prairie dogs in a field and kids in a school building? 😉
Good old fraud fundraising...
Setting aside the whole ‘fraud’ bit it’s telling that even they know people will be more willing to throw money at them if they think it’s going to someone that’s not them.
Please dont fix any of this.
The reason spam filters pick any of this up is the AMOUNT of Mail they are sending.
But I would LOVE a TRUTH in EVERY BIT OF IT, if they are allowed.
Catch it as it comes out and MARK IT, as it is, FAKE NEWS, LIES, and everything else.
I ASK my conservative friends to Look up the meaning of conservative to the republican party. And most are amazed.
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Nope. (This link might help, if you wish to learn.)
There are quite a number of characteristics of spam that filters can pick up. (Hint: there are enough, that filters rate email on a spectrum.)
One strong signal is, as you say, volume. Another is “people labeling it as spam”. There are others.
Yeah, this isn't a SPAM problem...
…it’s a fraud problem.
Re: Both? Both. It's both.
Both in this case, it’s fraud but what also makes it a spam problem is that if Google isn’t allowed to filter emails simply because they come from a politician then they would have to allow it through whether the recipient wants it or not.
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And if the mail contains a malicious attachment or link, well, you can’t make a political omelet without breaking some digital eggs…
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…what also makes it a spam problem is that if Google isn’t allowed to filter emails simply because they come from a politician then they would have to allow it through whether the recipient wants it or not.
Which could turn into a DDoS problem if enough politicians send emails at the same time. If this is seen as deliberate, there could be charges under the CFAA.
Re: Spam, spam, SPAM
Spam or spam is “bulk, unsolicited “.
SPAM is a trade mark of Hormel, which politely requests that folks don’t use SPAM to describe spam or Spam.
Seriously, their C&D letters are polite, like Jack Daniel’s C&D letters. I figure if they can manage to be polite about it, that should be rewarded.
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I think you’re right about it being a fraud problem rather than a spam problem, the emails are soliciting money on behalf of someone who doesn’t receive that money.
Presumably Trump and DeSantis haven’t made a stink about it because they’re worried people will stop responding to genuine emails.
I remember there was a big stink in 2020 when Trump was rasing money via email, and used pre-filled checkboxes and word salad to hide that the donations would be monthly rather than one time. IIRC that was considered unethical rather illegal because the information was there for careful recipients to see.
Republicans are scum
There’s no such thing as a “good Republican”. That party, though once admirable, has been so corrupted it is now nothing more than a grift and a stepping stone to complete destruction of the USA and democracy.
Well, I suppose spam is technically spam-like, but these descriptions seem misleading for things that are, in all likelihood, actual spam. At least, if someone feels like they were tricked into supporting a politician they’d never heard of, it’s hard to imagine they’d signed up for those messages.
…. and charge that sender a penny for each returned spam message, the first time. After that, each time a new campaign has a message returned as spam, charge them double the previous amount per piece. Keep doubling it for each succeeding campaign until someone picks up on the clue.
Obviously, free email is getting abused, and it is ripe for a financial opportunity for the first big email provider to “dip their toes in the water”, so to speak. A sliding scale of perhaps 1,000 pieces per day would be free, but after that, the charges kick in, and it should be definitely noticible to the wallet of any spammer. (I picked 1,000 pieces only because some clubs with monthly newsletters are that size and possibly larger. Feel free to adjust accordingly.)
The above was a meant to be an addendum to glenn’s thoughts, not far down from the first comment. I don’t know why WordPress decided that I had hit the general, end-of-the-line Reply button, when indeed I had hit the button directly within glenn’s message, but there we are. Once again, WordPress exhibits yet another issue that simply did not happen “in the old days”.
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Once again, WordPress exhibits yet another issue that simply did not happen “in the old days”.
When the site was hosted at ActionWeb.