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

    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.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

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

    Two

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

    link to this | view in chronology ]

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

      Re: Two

      "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.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

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

        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

        link to this | view in chronology ]

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

          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.

          link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 9 Nov 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!!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

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

      Re: Anonymous Coward

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

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    STJ, 9 Nov 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.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    anonymous coward, 9 Nov 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.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

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

    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.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    cvanallen, 10 Nov 2006 @ 10:36am

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

    Oh... wait - this is America.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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