Spamvertized

Young Democrats in Action strike again...

nospam@example.com (Richard Welty) — 2006-09-02T08:54:35Z

I don't know what you think, but the YDA, previously seen in action here, resurface with something that looks very much like a more conventional spam Here.
In fact, it looked so conventionally spammish that at first I assumed that they had an open relay or a hacked host, but apparently they've decided that acting more and more like spammers will somehow advance their cause. Sigh.

Lieberman and spam, 2006

nospam@example.com (Richard Welty) — 2006-08-10T09:35:37Z

Not quite the same thing as the 2004 incident; in fact, this is only tangentially related to the true purpose of the site, but it involves both spam and politics, so I'll post on it.
First, read this article on TPM Muckracker; for the record, I find Hubbell's explanations to be reasonably believeable. In otherwords, on the surface, Lieberman's site went down because in a remarkable coincidence, spammers found a vulnerability and overloaded it on the eve of the election.

Continue reading "Lieberman and spam, 2006"

Where your email address goes...

nospam@example.com (Richard Welty) — 2006-08-10T07:18:04Z

Back when I restarted Spamvertized, in this early post, I mentioned the need to check terms and conditions when you leave your email address at a site (political or otherwise.) At the time, I had in mind campaigns that passed around email lists to other, like minded political organizations.
I had no idea that a campaign could get so messed up as to sell email addresses to garden variety spammers, but then, we've never seen anything quite like the Katherine Harris campaign before.

Join 100 Fellow Young Democrats ...

nospam@example.com (Richard Welty) — 2006-07-21T19:36:26Z

Things have been pretty boring on the political spam front lately, but Democracy In Action fixed that.

Lieberman 2004 Spam?

nospam@example.com (Richard Welty) — 2006-06-27T11:29:39Z

We know that Lieberman launched his 2004 presidential campaign with a spam run. However, I never got a copy of the actual spam. I know that was 2 years ago, but if anyone by some mischance saved it, I'd like to get a sample.

Will there be a political spam flood?

nospam@example.com (Richard Welty) — 2006-06-12T23:20:09Z

I referred to the WP article in this earlier blog entry. There's a throwaway reference to the same WP article in a DailyKos open thread here (look about halfway down for the crack about Carol Darr). I think markos has never operated an internet mail server and has no idea what is really going on out there. I have operated them and continue to operate them, and I read the log files every day. Does this mean I think we should panic now? Probably not. The WP writer may be Chicken Little. Nonetheless, I am concerned and paying attention, and if it gets bad, hopefully I'll be able to provide the full details here.

Finding Full Headers in Eudora

nospam@example.com (Richard Welty) — 2006-06-12T15:33:23Z

Continuing our series on how to get full mail headers in popular browsers...
In Eudora, if you open up the message (double click on the line for it in the browser panel), there should be a button labeled "Blah Blah Blah". Clicking on this should give full header details.

Epending

nospam@example.com (Richard Welty) — 2006-06-12T14:33:46Z

The generic "you are a registered voter and we want to spam you" items (Here and here) are interesting in that they are almost certainly examples of epending. So far as I know, I never gave my email address to the Rensselaer County voter registration folks, and I'm pretty sure the recipient of the Richman for Treasurer item didn't either.
So where did they get these addresses? Why, they epended! What is epending? It's the somewhat widespread practice of mining the web trying to match up email addresses with individuals. It's hideously unreliable and generally discredited amongst competent email professionals, and highly regarded by a subset of marketing wonks.
You can guess what I think of political campaigns who hire epending firms.

Open Thread

nospam@example.com (Richard Welty) — 2006-06-12T12:58:58Z

Do you have anything to say about political spam?

Political spam flood?

nospam@example.com (Richard Welty) — 2006-06-11T10:13:02Z

The Washington Post seems to think so. This would be a (ab)use of the protections that the FCC extended to bloggers earlier this year. 'Twill be interesting to see how this shakes out. I may need to find some volunteers to help with the workload on this site (or else put up some google ads and hope they make enough to let me quit my day job.)

Richman wants to be Treasurer

nospam@example.com (Richard Welty) — 2006-06-06T21:07:08Z

Keith Richman shares with us Here.

Water Zone 7

nospam@example.com (Richard Welty) — 2006-06-06T20:58:58Z

Here's the very local spam provided by Tory Blue.

Unconfirmed Addresses & How do you tell if it's really spam?

nospam@example.com (Richard Welty) — 2006-06-06T19:38:34Z

That latter is the $64,000 question. Let's suppose that spam is unsolicited & bulk as our basic premise. Then suppose that some internet user, call him George, receives an unsolicited email. How is George to tell if there is any bulkiness to the message? A bit of a challenge, eh?
The complexity of the problem increases when you consider some of the common practices of political campaigns in handling email addresses. The executive summary is that some campaigns take email addresses where ever they can get them, even on scraps of paper handed in at meetings, rallies, and campaign stops. They then presume that the email addresses are all good, and do not require verification or confirmation of any sort. There are two problems here: mistakes in transcribing legit email addresses, which potentially produces a valid email address for someone who didn't ask for the email, and even worse, suppose a dirty trickster decided to pass in lots of "bad" email addresses for some value of "bad".
The Dean Campaign suffered from this problem in 2004, a problem which was compounded by the fact that they didn't have a functional way to unsubscribe. Details may be found here.
So now you have a direct email run which is quite large (that is, bulk), and includes many people who want the email and some, perhaps many, people who don't want it. Spam or not?
When I talk about poor email practices that flirt with the edges of spam, this is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about.

2004 Dean Joe-Job

nospam@example.com (Richard Welty) — 2006-06-06T18:59:46Z

Here is what I have from the 2004 Dean Joe-Job festivity. There is some extensive documentation and analysis interspersed with the samples of Joe-Job spam. The executive summary is that the Joe Job occurred roughly contemporaneously with the Dean Campaign firing an outsourced email provider. Revenge? You be the judge.
Updated
I just noticed that the 2 year old Spamhaus lookups relating to the Dean Joe-Job are defunct, and Hardigree/Bernal are not in the register there anymore. I am querying the folks at Spamhaus to see if they have any way to retrieve historical data. Stay tuned...

Joe Job Oops + Archive Oops...

nospam@example.com (Richard Welty) — 2006-06-06T15:24:48Z

It turns out that when I said here that I'd never seen any good examples of a politcal joe job, I was mistaken. It turns out that I have documentation of a Joe Job targeted at the Dean campaign in 2004. Unfortunately when I went to research it for this posting, I found that I'd broken the archive of the 2004 version of this site when I installed serendipity.
I'm going to try and fix the archives up tonight or tomorrow night, at which point I'll provide links to the documentation on the Dean Joe Job. I also have another "we reserve the right to spam registered voters" spam similar to this one coming from Dave Lugo, and a very local but still political spam from Tory Blue. Tory's will go up tonight for sure, and Dave's as soon as he provides me with a suitable copy -- but he's traveling and it may be a day or two.