Politicians Still Vote For Spamming Voters

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

Thu, Nov 9th 2006 11:49am — Mike Masnick

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

Two
2 'wrongs' don't make a 'right'.
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- 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.
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  - 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
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    - 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.
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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!!
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- 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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cvanallen, 10 Nov 2006 @ 10:36am

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

Oh... wait - this is America.
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