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Is the Dean Campaign Spamming?
bluelark writes "A few days ago, a friend of mine fowarded to me some spam apparently from the Howard Dean campaign. The sender's return address, however, was dean@america.propulsive.net. In addition, this is not the Texas email we've all heard about. Being bored, I did some research, and I found some intriguing results. If you are interested, I've posted the the technical details and the the spam. Even though the images in the email are being served from Venezuela, the links in the body of the spam are actually redirects from a marketing partner called eScriptions.net to a Dean for America registration page. It appears that the campaign is outsourcing their email with some dubious marketing partners who are then using notorious spamhauses to send out the actual email. Why does a supposedly "net savvy" campaign even think for one second that this approach is acceptable?"
Perhaps being net saavy means that you know enough to farm it out and not have to:
1) worry about doing it yourself, and
2) being able to blame it on someone else when it all goes badly (or is revealed as spam).
A politician lying! Oh dear!
</sarcasm>
If you want to market this way then at least use a list of people you know who will vote for you, or have requested it. There is no reasons to spam people about this and I wouldn't be surprised that a large number of people who are outside the state or even in another country got it.
Now how can they defend that? Spamming is worse than junkmail as the recipient has to pay rather than the sender. And before anyone say just press the delete key how do you do that on that average 3000 spams I get a month?
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
All you have to do is to sign up, voila, no more unsolicited emails :-)
Alternatively, you could raise an additional $7.6M for him, so he wont have to send even more mails.
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
Just a thought.
sPh
even though i live in finland i got an email ;)
with "arnold for governor" or something like that
on the subject line. didn't take a look at the mail
itself. ima trigger happy person when it comes to
spam.
be sure to use spamgourmet when you sign up at the Dean site...
...even think for one second that this approach is acceptable?"
Probably for the same reasons spammers everywhere continue to do it: some people will click on the pretty colors - they get results.
Look at who is calling the Dean campaign savvy- its mostly political journalists. Do we really think they are qualified to label someone net savvy? Just because Dean supports use Meetup.com does not mean the campaign is net savvy. Heck, most politicians aren't even politically savvy...
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Why does a supposedly "net savvy" campaign even think for one second that this approach is acceptable?"
Well, here it is on slashdot - and probably will end up being posted on numerous other sites, blogs, etc.
And as the old saying goes "Any publicity, is good publicity"
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
Say it ain't so, HoDo!
just drop all packets to port 25/tcp and you should be set
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
If he becomes president, Howard Dean will make your online experience easier by going after spammers.
Was there really a shock to find that politics was blending with spam?
Soon we'll wind up getting spammed right before elections, people offering penis enlargement for votes.
Why hasn't he emailed those running the campaign and ask them if they are working with eScriptions.net and if they are, if they know about the spam?
First things first, ask the accused. If they admit to it, then you don't have to waste all the time on researching it. If any other answer, then the research could be done to verify the answer.
Question everything.
You mean anti neocon? Good.
pro-French/i>
Not an isolationaist. Excellent.
pro-welfare
A social conscience instead of dog-eat-dog capitalism? Even better.
anti-religion
Which is perferct. 58% of Americans believe in the virgin birth, whereas only ~20% believe in Evolution. Majority believes in the fallacty that one has to believe in God in order to be a moral person.
This way you're going the way of the radical islamist nations: down the drain intellectually and socially.
That the campaign is as clueless as the man himself.
What's "segway"? Is that one of those multi-level marketing schemes?
while i do not condone the using of spam relays to further political goals, I think it would be quite a dangerous thing to try to regulate such speech on the internet. the truth is that few candidates can afford airtime to campaign, while the internet and email can provide a low barrier of entry to the political process. this is a way to level the playing field and get out additional voices on issues and policies.
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
Spam to me is all those emails about porn sites, viagra, college degrees, and all the other unwanted crap that ends up in my inbox.
If we did not have any spam, the kinds listed above, would anyone complain about emails from persons running for public office?
I think one of the most important jobs a citizen has is to review the candidates running for office and pick the best one. To that end, I do not think an email here or there about something important is a bad thing.
Then again, I guess those of us who are interested in politics could sign up with the individual campaigns to recieve emails.
The one thing I think everyone can agree on, is do not use known spammers. Do not validate what they do, so they can later say they deliver important speech.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
You sure can call this spam if foreigners (non american residing outside the US) get the email. Anybody outside the US got this email? Or did they get hold of list of americain only emails?
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
The answer is:
It's not about how you get seen; just get seen.
Why does Dean use spammers to get elected? Why did Karl Marx work from London, the heart of the capitalism he despised? Why does Noam Chomsky work out of MIT, the bastion of the establishment mentality he is trying to dismebowel? You must sibvert the system from the inside, that is why.
Who annointed him "net savvy"? I mean like unless Kibo declared him "net savvy", he's just another spammer.
This is probably just the opposition doing general ratfucking in the spirit of Donald Segretti and all the other Nixon Dirty Tricksters. I doubt they'd go about spamming people directly after the problems with the Texas email. Yes, the Dean Campaign is net-savvy - they have to be. That's the core of their support, that's the source of their fundraising, that's the general nature of the beast. Like it or not, Dean's core consituancy are those that care about YRO. -- Funksaw
I am not trying to make a big statement or something, but just a personal statement .... which is ... as long as Mr. Dean agrees to stay of my KazaaLite sharing, I agree to stay out of his spamming ...
Mr. Bush will have $170 million to fight his campaign .... and as most of his Rangers and Pioneers get him $100,000 and $200,000, he doesn't need to spam them - he just invites them over for barbeque ...
Mr. Dean needs all those other folks who ain't got a couple hundred grand to give away to the Chief Thief ... as long as his campaign respects the opt-out of his emailing list, I think he should do what it takes ....
If after Sept 11 we have woken up in Mr. Bush's "New" world where liberties can be screwed at the drop of a hat, maybe we have also woken up in this political world of spamming ... phew; maybe I am going a little too far ...
ok ... I am just playing the spoiler ... but sometimes my intense hatred of all the members of the Lunatics Club of Donald Rumsfeld gets the better of me .. . and almost makes me wanna say - Dean, hit me with an another spam. Doh.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think?
Come on, if you really have to ask these questions, then you dont understand politics.
Its all about telling people what they want to hear, so you get elected. Then start work on YOUR agenda, not your voters.. Which normally involves sucking more money out of them while reducing their rights.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Kinda funny to load slashdot and see this article, as not even five minutes ago I checked my email and found some spam with an e-mail tracking redirect to http://www.arnold-2003.com/ trying to get me to buy a t-shirt...
God was my copilot, but then we crashed on the top of a mountain and i had to eat him...
Maybe anti-dean people are simply sending 'fake' Spam in order to discredit his campaign. Hopefully someone from the dean campaign can clear this up.
The other possibility is that this might actually work. They are probably sending messages to 'known democrats' who signed their emails when they registered for the party or whatever (I live in IA and I've been getting a lot of calls from democrats and pollsters on my Cell, which they must have gotten from my registration).
Btw, just to defend the fact that I'm actually 'registered' to a political party. I liked both McCain and Bill Bradley (who ran against Gore in '2000), but the democratic primary was closer to my dorm room (the republican one was all the way across campus) and I figured there was a better chance of meeting a hot chick at the dem. Primary. Also, a friend of mine knew a guy working on the Bradley campaign so we were invited to the campaign HQ in Des Moines after the vote, which was kind of cool.
In fact, I did meet a really hot chick and she decided to come up to Des Moines with us, which was pretty cool.
It also worked out well, as I fucking hate bush.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I want to know his slashdot user ID.
I wondered about this as well, but sadly it appears that Dean did at least pay for the marketing campaign. *However*, it also appears that the campaign was duped into thinking that company they contracted with would only send mails to people who opted-in, so they were actually showing a reasonable amount of acumen, and just neglected to run a Google search on the company in question. Oops.
I'm a little unsure of the submitter's motives in posting a two-week old story to Slashdot, because if anyone bothers to read the rest of the blog, they'll note that the Dean campaign severed its ties to the Spamhaus when it was informed about the actions being taken in its name.
More balanced coverage from Spamvertized.org
It looks like an honest mistake, and its a shame that some people will fixate on this misstep.
His intentions are well founded, but he has a large staff of people who make decisions for him. One of them probably thought it was indicitive of his "net savy" reputation to use online mail as a form of campaigning.
Sounds resonable.
I don't think he's net savy, as much as he is resonable to needs to the internet generation, or more than likely using this as the thing to set him a part, and make him a great canidate for president if the stock in people caring about the internet grows.
Yee Haw.
http://use.perl.org
The national do not call list has an exemption for political orginizations. Allowing them to make calls without fallowing the do not call list. I wonder if the dean campain is trying to kinda of claim the same exemption with this.
As far as esubscritions goes i dont think they harvest address by scouring the web. They just collected address through sweepstakes or agreements with other sites. I might be wrong though.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
The dean campaign has been doing a very good job of using the net to build their grass roots, not that Howard Dean knows how to configure a Cisco router, or whatever.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Using an open relay, or even worse an open proxy to send spam is not "speech" it's destructive hacking. If they want to send email, they should send it from their own machines. And, they should live with being black-listed or whatever.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Have you folks learned nothing? Did you think for a second this guy was anything else? Want to buy a bridge?
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I was recently hit by a flood of spam asking me to vote for Mr. Schwarzenegger. I'm way over here in England, and couldn't vote for him even if I wanted to.
Whoever it's from or whatever it's advertising, my spam goes to SpamCop.
Not that these folks are any better, but it appears that emailresults.net (WHOIS SPEWS results) and propulsive.net/surfplex.net are not related to each other.
I am part of the Dean campaign here in Brooklyn, and I am qualified to label the campaign net savvy. Over the past 6 years I've built massive e-commerce sites, B2B, non-profit, and many other sorts of web-projects. I used to work with asp/sql server, now mostly in L.A.M.P. And I'm not the only one. Three-quarters of the people in the campaign work in tech or internet-related professions, from coders to DBAs to sysadmins to designers to information architects. Furthermore, almost without exception all of those people use OSS. Yes, OSS, the same constituency as those who read /. In fact, through /. I have accidentally stumbled upon other Dean campaigners, and through the Dean campaign I have accidentally stumbled upon other /.-ers. If that doesn't define a net-savvy campaign, then I defy you to come up with a better definition.
But even without that, using Meetup and MoveOn, blogs and online contributions does make you net-savvy, because it is ground-breaking and it is working. They have used the internet as a tool to organize, raise money, and turn Dean from a little-known name into the front runner in the democratic field. That, my friend, makes you net savvy. Measure that against Bush, who won't even let you email him anymore.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The fact is that blacklists are not organized half as well as they would have people believe. If you want to send bulk mail you use an outsourcer because unless you do most of your messages will get classified as junk. Getting round spam filters turns out to be the main technical skill the outsourcers provide.
The problem with spam is that it has got to the point where everything becomes a he-said she-said argument. There is actually no way to know if either side is telling the truth. Try putting up a pro-israeli or pro-palestinian web site and you will find you are blacklisted for spamming before you send out a single email.
All 'outsourced maillers' are listed on blacklists, most of them for good reason. There is absolutely no way that an outsourced email provider can know if an email list provided by a client is legit or spam.
The problem here is that the protocols simply don't work as well as they should. We don't have a way to know who is behaving honestly and who is not. That is a protocol bug. It is fixable but only if we face up to the fact that we need to fix it and get the email providers to deploy whatever changes are necessary.
That is not going to happen in time for the 2004 election. But think of this, until the Internet US politics has been game where you take as much money in bribes from corporate America and then you spend your whole time in office paying back favors. Bush and Cheney are paying back $2000 for every $1 they collected from the super-rich. Next election they plan to spend $200 million. That means another $400 billion to be spent on tax cuts for the super rich when the budget deficit is heading for $700 billion. Don't think you are getting any of that unless you are one of the insider investors. Otherwise you are more likely to find that your investment in Bush reaps the same results as your investment in 'Kenny Boy' Lay's Enron.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Yes. I bet you can't explain politically motivated moderation.
I was about to say the same thing as the parent. Glad you got on and brought more light to the situation too.
Definately not a Dean supporter here, but things like this can happen to any organization.
Sometimes overzealous supporters can be your greatest enemies.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Suprise, the Bush II relection machine also spammed. You can see it here on Cryptome.
The difference? Dean for America stopped working with the spamming company the same day. Did Bush-Cheney '04 Inc. ? No, However, after cryptome posted the e-mail, the email used in the spam was unsubscribed from the list, and an automatic confirmatory e-mail sent. This despite the fact that John, who runs Cryptome, never subscribed, and never sent in an e-mail requesting to be unsubscribed. There is no evidence that the unsolicited e-mailing has been stopped.
It's easy to say Dean for America isn't net-savvy. I mean they sent out some unsolicted e-mail right? But how many companies stop using spam once they realize what their marketing department was doing?
How many do it the same day? Bush, despite a record breaking campaign warchest still is soliciting by spam. Dean isn't. That tells me who is savvy.
Gryftir
http://www.santacruzbynight.com/index.shtml Santa Cruz By Night Vampire Larp
http://www.spamvertized.org/2004/dean-emailresults .html
It's on the second paragraph.
Personaly I think it's ok to make a mistake as long as you "fix" it and are fairly open about it.
It was necessary to destroy your privacy in order to save it?
I can't help but imagine what the reaction among the YRO crowd would be if this had been the Bush campaign.
MAYBE MAYBE? PERHAPS? Think about it folks...
He uses spam because he is afraid of answering questions here from slashdotters who happen to be voters..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
If you had bothered to check the page that you actually link to yourself here, you had seen that this already was resolved (5 days ago by the looks of it). To quote: "After the Dean campaign was presented with clear cut evidence as to the nature of emailresponse.net, they investigated promptly and terminated their relationship with the company that same day."
Does that mean the more enemies we defeat, the better off we are?
Funny how when Orrin Hatch hires another company to run his website and that company violates copyright laws, it's Orrin Hatch's fault and he should be responsible.
But when the allegedly net-savvy Dean does the same, it's an honest mistake.
Mmmm.. Donuts
I think one of the most important jobs a citizen has is to review the candidates running for office and pick the best one. To that end, I do not think an email here or there about something important is a bad thing.
How does this crap get modded up? Any unsolicited, mass, annoying contact is spam. Why would you even think that it is ok to send someone email that they may or may not care about?
Then again, I guess those of us who are interested in politics could sign up with the individual campaigns to recieve emails.
Duh.
I don't want some politician to decide what is important for me to know. I know how to seek out information I am interested in, thank you.
Mmmm.. Donuts
This weekend, I've seen a few people wearing "Vote Howard Dean" t-shirts. Now this wouldn't be out of the ordinary if I had not seen those people in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada...
Spam 1---
Return-Path: [dean@america.propulsive.net]
Received: from 109.ts8.increments.net ([69.41.70.109])
by bill's mailserver (8.11.6/8.11.6) with SMTP id h7EL26R23408
for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2003 16:02:06 -0500
To: bill's email
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 17:12:08 -0500
Message-ID: [1060895528.4360@109.ts8.increments.net]
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21)
From: "DeanForAmerica.com" [dean@america.propulsive.net]
Reply-To: "DeanForAmerica.com"[dean@america.propulsive.net]
Subject: Presidential Candidate Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html
Spam 2---
Return-Path: [dean@for.accomplishing.net] Received: from 148.ts8.increments.net ([69.41.70.148])
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To: bill's email Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 14:42:07 -0500
Message-ID: [1060972927.7349@148.ts8.increments.net]
X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre2us
From: "DeanForAmerica.com" [dean@for.accomplishing.net]
Reply-To: "DeanForAmerica.com" [dean@for.accomplishing.net]
Subject: Presidential Candidate Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html
I work for a place that hired a pr firm. Without our knowledge, they spammed the world. We dropped them immediately, but the damage was done...it's entirely possible for the company getting the message out to use undesirable methods without the client knowing.
Hmm... sources on this, please?
I think it's safe to assume that his political career was probably *not* torpedoed by this, seeing as he's still a member of Congress?
And with marketing terms they call it "Email Blitz"... we pay for our mail to be sent to "so many hundred thousand" email addresses for a fee.
Spamming works for selling viagra, etc. because you get one sale for sending 100,000 emails and you have little or no negative impact from the 99,999 people that you just pissed off.
If you send 100,000 political spams and that gets you one vote/donation while 99,999 people are now pissed off at you and will vote against you, how does this help your compaign?
I'm a republican. I'm certainly not going to vote for Dean. Let's make that clear at the outset.
That being said, who cares about this in the long run? He apologized, I doubt they'll do it again, so I would hardly hold it against him long term. With all the spammers out there who will send out junk email - it's kind of hard to find someone reputable to do this for you. A campaign worker fucked up. Big deal.
That being said, isn't anyone on that side of the aisle worried about Dean? I find him to be the easiest Democrat to beat in the fall of 2004. This guy can be turned directly into the scion of leftist antiwar evil with a few carefully placed TV ads. The reason why he has survived till now is that he is running in a Democrat primary audience - a very leftist group to start with. His credentials and arguments play well there. Put him in a general electoral audience and watch how fast he gets bashed.
I'm going to risk a preliminary estimate of 500 electorals for Bush if Dean is the Democrat candidate. If you think i'm wrong, I recommend a drive to Middle America and a discussion with some of the people there.
At least Graham or Kerry or Lieberman would have a better chance with the general public. And for my sake, make this an actual campaign rather than a romp, willya? I haven't been overly happy with this administration.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
A politician with questionable ethics?
Dont tell me this is a suprise?
If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done?
"I'm a little unsure of the submitter's motives in posting a two-week old story to Slashdot"
Considering it is posted right above a 3 MONTH OLD story about benchmarking...
What could possibly be your definition of "reasonable acumen" that fails to include at least a Google search?
Dean campaign ADMITS THEY HIRED SPAMMER, claims ignorance.
s .html
http://www.spamvertized.org/2004/dean-emailresult
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I hate call waitin`~+~~~
NO CARRIER
How's that flamebait? Sounds about right to me. I guess I'm biased, because I totally agree.. Seems like all that matters in election politics anymore is money. Noone gives a fuck about whether a candidate is total asshole or not, if I gets his face plastered all over hell's half acre, he stands a chance of winning. Bush came to town recently. It costs $2,000 to fucking attend his speech. That doesn't even guarantee eye contact! Only the "privelage" of hearing that stupid moron's voice in person, spewing the same old shit. Plus, the debates are utter bullshit. Watch the "Bush vs Bush" debate on the Daily Show's site to see what I mean.. (it's actually quite funny to watch though, I'm just in a pissed-off mood right now) daily show
The Dean campaign is decentralized, and one aspect of decentralization is that you'll have a lot of activity that's inherently outside the campaign's control. The fact that it's supportive of Dean doesn't mean that the Dean campaign sent it. For that matter, Dean's opponents might've funded it to make him seem less clueful about the 'net.
Jon Lebkowsky jonl@polycot.com http://www.polycot.com
There are many "well meaning" people who would like to see Dean elected, are not part of his official campaign group, but are really not net savvy enough to understand the issue of spamming. Some of them may even think that this helps Dean and are just ignorant of the issue. Don't think for a moment that Dean controlls the actions of all people who are "participating" in his campaign.
Which enemies are you talking about? 'Cause if you're talking about Osama, I don't think he's been detained yet. Actually, I think he's still at large and the mere thought of him still attacks us. How many people first thought of terrorism when they heard about the NE Blackouts?
If you're talking about Saddam, it looks like he's still out there as well. He may not be nearly as powerful, but he's out there. And it turns out that he wasn't even the powerful foe we were led to believe...where's the WMDs?
Now I usually consider myself pretty conservative, but we haven't completely defeated anyone but our own personal rights and liberties.
As for the recession, I think is just now starting to recover...if you consider this a recovery. And it's hardly a recovery for the tech sector, which is of SOME concern on a geek news site.
It's not spam. He's not trying to sell you anything. He's running for office. This is a great inexpensive way to compete against politicians who have more advertising funds. Far less annoying than TV ads, too.
Dean for America strongly opposes spam and has in place a "no spam" policy. We recently contracted with two vendors who made assurances that their lists were opt-in only. On Tuesday, August 12th, Dean for America received notification from a supporter that spam was being sent. We terminated our relationship with both vendors immediately.
There are currently no third party vendors authorized to send email on behalf of Dean for America and none planned in the future.
Please send any additional complaints to abuse@deanforamerica.com.
Nicco Mele
Webmaster
http://www.deanfor
I've been getting spam from (supposedly) the "Democratic National Committee" for the past several years. Dean's participation is little surprise.
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
and I still got spammed with the Dean for America crap (issued by some third party).
.ca - you'd think they would remove any country-specific addresses.
The worst part is that my e-mail address ends in a
Or maybe the spammers are inflating their mailing lists with Canadians.
Last year - the Californian senate canidate.
This year - mail sent to the UseNet admin (news) from
Subject: Fridays With Frank Supports Cumberbatch Campaign Tonight
From: Robin Mindt robin@ebadvertising.com
So far Frank hasn't answered what critera he chose for selecting his spammers. It can't be actual talent, as news is a RFCed reference to UseNet News.
Sources on what? That Orrin Hatch used a company that used unlicensed Java code? It's been discussed on slashdot and he's been panned for it.
This is not torpedoing Dean's political career by any means. You can't criticize Orrin Hatch for hiring a company that screwed up any more than you can criticize Dean for hiring a company that screwed up.
Personally, I am more forgiving when there is evidence to believe that they weren't aware of exactly what was happening.
Mmmm.. Donuts
(As to the "Consent, not method" definition: I think this definition is less useful than "bulk email from a stranger" because currently you do have a right to other forms of non-consent based communications, so courts might not look kindly on laws that take that right away. Especially any rules that prevent individual emails from one person to another)
You have a right to free speech. You don't have a right to free free speech. Just because you can't afford a billboard doesn't give you the right to substitute inexpensive spraypaint grafitti instead. Just because you can't afford a radio commercial doesn't give you the right to use a bullhorn in a high-school football game crowd. Just because you can't afford printing costs for a mail campaign doesn't give you the right to steal a stamp machine. Just because you don't want to work to get an opted-in email list doesn't give you the right to hijack relays, fake return addresses, and do the other 'take resources without any payment' that spammers do.
The problem here is that the protocols simply don't work as well as they should. We don't have a way to know who is behaving honestly and who is not. That is a protocol bug. It is fixable but only if we face up to the fact that we need to fix it and get the email providers to deploy whatever changes are necessary.
;) Kidding.
;)
Well it might be a natural consequence and trade off for such a promiscuous system.
In my free hotmail inbox, I routinely get salacious emails whose subjects are obviously random walks with spaces in between the letters. If a random process can send me spam, then no amount of client side filtering will ever work completely.
The real problem is not email, or politics, or being rude, but the fact that the internet as a product of our collective choice; is not authentic. Its a big haze and its a turing test with every fricken email you get.
Everyone jumps at the thought of internet citizenship. That our privacy and individuality is at stake. The fact is, the most vociferous privacy advocates are really closet sex freaks who just want to pick up little kids in public forums.
But seriously, in meat space we have entrusted public agencies at various levels to enforce social canon to provide and protect our liberty but no further before liberty is diminished. Its a little recursive and confusing, but there is no way to apply that to the internet. Right now.
We elect to participate in an untrusted system with little enforcement.
If Dean were really smart, he would propose something as balanced as our bill of rights pertaining to a public network. It would blend well with environmentalism and the whole supernational mindset that is in character with politically neutral intellectual forums.
Like slashdot.
Did anyone ask Dean's campaign for comment before publicizing this information? It would be rather simple for opponents to send fake spam and have a few geeks spread the lie as gospel.
This is why I continue to trust our crappy corporate media more than independent media.
"the campaign was duped into thinking that company they contracted with would only send mails to people who opted-in"
And how large did they think this list of "please send me emails asking for my support on a presidential campaign" would be?
Honest, and "opt-in" email techniques are hardly words that you'd associate with each other.
Who really cares about the Democratic primary anyway? They are a party without an identity and without a constituency. The far left is pissed off at them for bending over for Bush and Ashcroft's police state policies (err... I mean patriotic defense of the Homeland). The moderates realize that no Dem in the current crop has a snowball's chance in hell of defeating the Bush juggernaut, so they don't care. The religious right and the hard-hat-and-tractor crowd were always solidly pro-Bush, so they don't give a flip. Who does that leave in the Democrats' corner? The Kennedys and Barbara Streisand! This is no way to run a political party!
After the Dean campaign was presented with clear cut evidence as to the nature of emailresponse.net, they investigated promptly and terminated their relationship with the company that same day.. "
So they made a mistake, and when they were given evidence of the mistake they quickly took appropriate action to correct it.
The fact that they made a mistake isn't great, but I approve of the response. What else do you want them to do besides try to be more carefull in the future?
I suppose they could hire emailresults.net to mass email out an apology to everyone on the net...
I'll admit i'm biased, but i think i would feel the same about any other candidate who made the same response when prevented with evidence of spamming by their campaign.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Orrin Hatch had two things going against him. One was the fact that he had just days earlier advocated using techincal measures to destroy computers of copyright infringers, and the other as the (R) after his name.
Wait, is this the same Bush as in "the president credited two rounds of major of tax cuts with stabilizing the economy after recession, corporate scandals and a war."
Good thing we have Bush around to help us recover from the corporate scandals that his vice-president was implicated in and from the war that he started and lied to or mislead the people about in order to get support for.
For his next trick, the Secret Service will run around and hit people over the head with sticks, and we can then raise military spending to help defend americans from getting hit over the head with sticks.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Conspiracy theories will get you nowhere, nor will it get your party anywhere. The most likely explanation is that the email was sent from the Dean camp. :-P
Yeah, and Hatch's contributions are just so funny, too.
Aren't you exactly the kinda' troll you're attempting to call someone else?
michael is a republican...
Also, are you guys going to put a press release out on the site noting that the campaign has terminated the relationship with emailresults.net and eScriptions.com? Those are the two vendors you are referring to, correct?
You must be new here.
mats
One man's ceiling is another man's floor.
He's not President: he lost the election. He is an unelected military despot. You know, like Gadaffi and Saddam, all of them are from the same mould.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Because he had just introduced a bill to destroy the computers of users who did exactly what he did.
It perfectly illustrates how flawed his thinking for the bill was and how innocent people like himself in that case will get trapped in it.
That's why it's a big deal.
Those in the anti-spam community who think the problem can be solved with laws regulating e-mail have mostly written their anti-spam laws to ban unsolicited _commercial_ email. They do this in the hope that commercial speech is easier to get a law against than an entire time-and-manner style restriction.
It's a backwards hope. The content of the message has little to do with whether it's spam, and in fact regulating by content may make it harder to get the law through in the end.
But one result is that it promotes commerce-based spam definitions, which makes politicians more willing to spam, because from what they have been told, political spam is not spam.
Now the Dean campaign figured it out after the fact but there are many other political spammers.
Phone spam is illegal already, but not poltical phone spam. In the last primary, a local Democrat phone spammed me 3 times in one day with recordings endorsing her. One was from Cruz Bustamante, current democrat frontrunner in the replace-Gray-Davis race.
Yes, Bustamante is a spammer. If you have decided you will not vote for a spammer, you need to take him off your list. I wrote letters to him which he ignored. His spam actually did violate the law, even for polticial phone-spams, to boot.
I wonder if the other campaigns will make as clear a "no spam" statement?
A basic rule of political campaigns is that you don't generally target your paid communications to people who you already know are voting for you. Why? Because THEY ARE ALREADY VOTING FOR YOU. Unless it is a fundraising pitch or to recruit volunteers from your existing base of supporters, the point of spamming lots of people is to persuade people who are undecided to vote for you. And it wouldn't matter much if the spam crossed state lines. The guy is running for president.
Why is it that GOP supporter keep saying that Dean is such an unelectable candidate?
If he is so unelectable, doesn't that HELP the GOP?
I'm gonna put on my psychic cap on right now and make two predictions:
Dean will win the Democratic primary. Dean will lose the general election.
But then, the democratic race has always been a race to find out who is going to lose to Bush. The country has moved frightenly to the right in the past few years, and despite how many fucked up things Bush does, he's still popular. IMO, Dean has the best chance to win, but it's still not enough.
First and foremost, the democratic base likes to see someone with a backbone come out against Bush. Someone who didn't belly over after September 11th and vote for all these horrendous laws. Secondly, you talk about "Middle America", filled with people that you presume would never vote for an anti-war candidate. That may be true, but they'd never vote for a pro-war Democrat either. Why vote for Kerry or Lieberman instead of Bush, when all they do is talk about how great Bush is?
It is not sufficient to simply mimick your opponent. The Coke vs. Pepsi argument has lasted for decades because they're different and they appeal to different people. If one simply copied the other, they wouldn't be around for very long. Kerry and especially Liberman are trying very hard to be the Shasta Colas of the world. Dean, on the other hand, is more like 7-Up: the un-cola.
go check the headers of the particular spam or better yet, go check the the HTML source.
Well, tough shit. I don't care how honest an accident it was. 10,000 accidents is more than enough for people to get a clue, and realize it's a minefield and you can't casually stroll up to any company out there. I'm sick and tired of accidents, and it's about time their own fucking legs got blow off for their criminally irresponsible behavior.
However, I will forgive them if they're sue the ass off the people they hired. They have an airtight case that their subcontractors violated the law and caused irreparable harm to their name. Sue them. For a lot. Drive the spamhaus out of business.
Or they're a rather large part of the problem. In fact, they're pretty much the entire problem.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
No, it's both. It's the Dean campaigns' fault, they are responsible, AND it was an honest mistake. The two aren't mutually exclusive.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
If I had mod points you'd get modded up, not down. I'm no friend of the right (or the left for that matter) but Dean's a creep. We need someone in office who will shake things up...we're in a sad state of affairs right now and neither side is brave enough to make any major changes. (Unless of course those changes involve the erosion of our civil liberties and/or more money in their consituents' pockets.)
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
...does the Pope shit in the woods?
The guy has no plan, he just likes to attack.
Just in case anyone was about to believe that baseless allegation:
Dean's Plan for Ensuring Civil Rights
Dean's Plan for the Economy
Dean's Plan for the Environment
Dean's Plan for Health Care
Dean's Plan for Education
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The campaign manager, Joe Trippi, has the Slashdot ID #689074. Is it the the real Joe Trippi? Who knows, but he's posted before on Dean campaign issues, and I'm waiting to see if he posts again on this subject.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Checkout this video from the Howard Dean TV website.
"We promise not to spam you, except for the last three weeks of each quarter."
It was recorded on August 5th... oh, the irony...
I received spam from the Dean campaign too, though I wasn't gonna vote for his butt anyway.....but since getting spammed, I went for neutral (no voting for him) to crusading against him and others who use spam to improve their situations (financially motivated or otherwise).
Arnold for Prez, 20xx! (it would be funny).
Though if you think about it, conspiracy nuts might say that it's not really Dean's campaign that's sending spam especially after public outcry against spam and that a third party (an opponent) is doing the spam to give a negative image of the "target."
o well....who cares, right?
- "In the year 2004, to avoid another ballot mess, Floridan voters decide not to vote for anything, allowing Gore, who's not running to win for some weird reason." (format: the "in the year 2000" skits on Conan O'Brien)
That would be Orrin "I'd like to blow up other people's computers for illicit filesharing" Hatch?
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
It is unfair to assume that the Dean camp is in fact the spammer simply because spam is being sent on their behalf. There are millions upon millions of Dean supporters, many with very deep pockets, any one of them could be running the spam campaign. It is like blaming Tuperware for some housewife inviting you to a Tuperware party. Now, that isn't to say that it is impossible for the spam to be coming from Dean For America but rather that it is both unlikely and unfair to come to such a conclusion without decisive evidence.
The New Root Council, kickin' ass sinc
And your point ?
And if you even think of saying its to create a state run army, you need a quick history lesson:
"A Militia" is composed of NON professional citizens.. in order to defend and protect the individual's freedom and liberties from any form of oppression, be it governmental or criminal.
"Well regulated" translates to being well trained, in the language at the time the amendment was written.
Still have a point to make? Please feel free.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Aha, now I remember. Hatch's mistake wasn't so much the copyright issue, which really wasn't a big deal, probably wasn't his fault (since Hatch probably couldn't tell Java from a cup of coffee), and so on, and you're right that Hatch was no more guilty than Dean. It was more, as another poster mentioned, the "people in glass houses" effect. Since I haven't seen any evidence the campaign *was* aware of the issue, and since they stopped once they were made aware, I'd say they're innocent until proven guilty.
Other groups were also duped by the same "e-mail direct marketers", including companies like British Airways, HP, and New Line Cinema.
- Why does a supposedly "net savvy" campaign even think for one second that this approach is acceptable?
Because political hype is worth the MIME format its printed on.Deans biggest stuff up was deciding to send email at all to people who hadn't indicated an interest in receiving email from his campaign.
Our prisons will still be full of nonviolent drug offenders, public programs will continue to be slashed while the DEA gets billions to ensure the above happens.
HA! Had me then ya lost me. Blow it out your ass, druggie!
If the National Do Not Call List rules are any indication, Mr. Dean may believe that he is exempt from being labelled a spammer.
From the FTC donotcall site:
Will the National Do Not Call Registry cover all telemarketing calls?
Placing your number on the National Do Not Call Registry will stop most telemarketing calls, but not all. Some types of calls are exempt. Political organizations, charities, telephone surveyors, and the business of insurance, to the extent that it is regulated by state law, are permitted to call you.
So if this is specifically exempted from the telephone spam rules, presumably it will also be exempted from any future email spam rules, and thus has already been declared perfectly acceptable behavior.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
Somebody needs to tell the economy the recession is over, lol etc.
If being opposed to people who have no conscience when it comes to matters of their fellow man's condition, then call me Osama! Being a good "American" these days is nothing more than being a yes man for the current regime and a blathering idiot who waves flags with no regard for what that flag was supposed to mean when it was created. You fools who think you are good Americans are dupes.
Pro-French
Hmm?? Who brought up the French? Leaving aside the fact that they are largely responsible for many great things where it counts: intellectual, artistic and culinary... what did the French do to you? I mean personally? Or are you just joining the rest of the mob and saying "me too"!?
Pro-welfare
Just look at any country that actually makes provisions for it's citizens welfare and I will show you a country with a happier citizenry. As it is most Americans are boorish, selfish crabs. To most "good Amreicans" it's all about "me" and everyone else be damned. That's why we had the dotbomb bubble and Enron. That's not business, that's incompetence. But it's also no surprise given most American's penchant for mediocrity.
Anti-religion
Religion is fine as long as you don't try to force it down everyone else's throat. When you do that, you start to act like the religious extremists in the middle east. Kind of like Bush encouraging "faith-based initiatives". Why on earth should someone who doesn't believe in Bush's god (ha! fucking sinner) have to go to a church that supports Bush's god and expects that person to also convert or believe in Bush's god? Why should a person who doesn't want to have anything to do with Bush's god have to suffer because the church WON'T give them help unless they convert. If you are "pro-religion" are you saying that people who don't believe what you believe should suffer? Doesn't sound too "christian" to me. I hope Jesus pokes your eyes out when you meet him.
Oh... I see you are trying to start a flame war? OK. Try harder.
Un-news
Sorry guys, if you were expecting him to be different from the majority of other politicians then you will be truly disappointed. He might be better than Bush or Lieberman, but not much. If UCE will get him into the Oval Office then UCE it is.
Rutland Herald - Newspapers sue Dean for access to schedule
Portsmouth Herald - A medical marijuana campaig report card
My advice: pick another horse.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Word. Dean hits me as some kind of two faced mealy mouthed motherfucker. My aunt died of cancer last year. With weed she was able to take some extra chemo which bought her a few extra months. Months that allowed her to see a grand niece and nephew come into the world before she left. Without weed she would've died sooner and a lot rougher. Dean wants to end California's Medical Marijuana laws just like Bush and Ashcroft. Fuck him. Atleast Kucinich has got the balls to he'll support State's MMLs and create similar Federal ones.
Fuck Dean.
This is far from a smear tactic in that the Dean campaign had been contacted prior to the story submission. (My friend contacted them last week about the spam and never heard a response.) And if we had heard a response back, I still would have blogged the story and prominently noted the Dean campaign response. And surprisingly enough, as of this writing, there has been nothing on the Dean blog or the DeanForAmerica Web site about the spams nor the cutting of ties with the marketing partners.
Don't you understand, marijuana kills thousands and thousands of people on the US every year! It inslaves our children and gives them the gateway to other hard drugs. Make it easier to get? No way. Anyone caught with that stuff - ANY amount - should go to jail for LIFE. That will end the problem right there. Good luck getting that crap in prison.
The only "high" people need is Jesus the Lord.
He is a Medical Doctor so maybe he is right. Maybe all (sick or not) marijuana users do belong in jail like he supports.
I guess since I like Dean I need to support him on this. How long do you jail a pot smoker for anyways?
Dean is a huge fraud!
It's not 58%, it's 83% (and 28% believe in evolution which isn't capitalized by the way.) But what exactly is your point here? Are you trying to say that because the Democrats are anti-religion they have a better chance of winning the hearts and minds of the average American? You've got it back asswards I'm afraid.
So how long before we're being offered the opportunity to vote for the generic viagra party?
Custom Rules For SpamAssassin
Here (.txt file; download if your browser doesn't like it) are the complete text and headers for the one and only email I have yet received from the Dean campaign. I have been waiting for it; I responded on the MoveOn primary that they could forward my email address to the candidate I voted for, and then a couple of weeks later, MoveOn sent me a confirmation email saying that, if I had changed my mind, I could reply within 48 hours to prevent them from passing it along, but otherwise they would go ahead and do so as I previously requested. (Now *that's* opt-in.) I haven't received even a second copy of this email even though I signed up with the local DeanForAmerica campaign at a festival last month.
Now, I get spam. Lots. Not like some of you spam-magnets, but a bunch. I also get snail-mail political spam out the wazoo because I joined the ACLU. I actually *asked* for email from the Dean campaign more than a month ago, and have gotten just a single missive.
Yeah, I'm sure that his whole campaign is built on spam. You've convinced me!
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
if howard dean was so net savvy he would
VOTE FOR LYNDON LAROUCHE!!!
a "net savy" person either :)
How nice that you're willing to see thousands of innocent civilians die in order to fulfill the lust for power of the fanatical neocon cult.
Shocking as this may be to you, some folks actually oppose marijuana legalization. I tend to support freedoms as much as possible, simply on the ground that limiting freedoms has difficult-to-measure and eventually economically expensive precedent-setting power. I really don't give a damn about freedom from an ideological perspective (though that can be a useful perspective). You want, very much, to prevent folks from limiting freedoms in ways that will hurt society, and a good way to do that is to simply prevent them from limiting freedoms at all, except in cases where there obviously isn't an option (jailing murderers is pretty much a given -- I doubt many people would want to live in a country where anyone could kill).
However, I really dislike marijuana. First, it's a form of entertainment. Entertainment is essentially a form of flushing economic power down the toilet. You consume the time spent on entertainment as well as the resources used to produce it. That's not a big deal -- we have plenty of forms of entertainment that are present, and certainly nobody wants to live a life without entertainment. It is, though, a negative in my mind. Second, marijuana, like (legal) smoked tobacco, produces negative network effects -- secondhand smoke affects even those who don't wish to use the product. Third, and the most damning in my eyes, is that the economic cost of THC (as in legal alcohol and other non-legal drugs) is both hidden and long-term. It's difficult for someone to weigh how much marijuana they're going to smoke when they start, and exactly how much impact in life it's going to have on them. If you're throwing quarters into an arcade machine, it's pretty easy to calculate the cost in time and quarters. Furthermore, the cost is bounded -- how many quarters you have at the moment. Marijuana poses the issues of long-term neurological damage (a la alcohol) and long-term cancer problems (a la tobacco).
Had we known of the massive cost to society tobacco would have had today, it's doubtful that we would have allowed it. In marijuana's case, we have the potential to avoid a severely damaging influence before it becomes entrenched.
I don't have any particular problems with the death penalty. The United States has an extremely exhaustive death penalty investigation system. In most countries with death penalties, a ten year period before being executed would hardly be considered acceptable. People being executed are those who have been deemed unrehabilatable. They would be spending life in prison otherwise, even in those European nations that you'd presumably consider more enlightened.
For similar reasons to those I gave for marijuana, I support at least the general concept of the War on Drugs, though I will admit that constant reexamination of the campaign is definitely necessary. Like other projects with large amounts of funding, there have certainly been abuses at points in the past.
Finally, I view NAFTA as essentially an eventual necessity. Eliminating free trade, and once again encumber exports and imports, subidizes failing US industries at the expense of more healthy ones. This was acceptable two hundred years ago when good transportation was cheaper. The world market was less internationally competitive. A successful industry could have funds sucked off of it since it had next to a local monopoly. However, that flexibility is no longer present. Unpleasant as it is, failing industries simply have to be let die. If the US steel industry is no longer competitive...then it must go away. Keeping it on life support for another twenty years and hurting other industries, when it's unlikely that the industry will recover, is of dubious value.
May we never see th
Politicians know how to screw you. "Net savvy" politicians know how to screw you over the internet.
In the event of another terrorist attack, the Iraq war will be revealed for what it is - a complete irrelevance to the real battle of wiping out the few thousand or so nutters that comprise Al-Queda and friends. In any case, terrorist attacks *have* continued. Al-Queda (or its local franchisee Jamar Islamaiya) bombed an international hotel in Jakarta, and was planning an attack on a major Asian political summit in Thailand (which Shrub was to attend) when one of the major perpetrators was arrested.
Or am I overestimating the political sophistication of the Joe Sixpack, who simply equates one raghead with another? We've seen that in Australia with the MS Tampa incident, where much of the population seemed to confuse the Taliban with people who, at worst, were trying to get to Australia to get jobs and make money and at least some of which were actually fleeing the friggin' Taliban.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Who the hell is Howard Dean, and why on Earth should I care?
Hey, Homer Simpson must have known about this campaign already:
"Dean, you are a stupid-head!" - Homer J. Simpson
#Secret Windows Source Code, in MS C% - if (uptime >= "24 hours") then bsod() else print "Windows License Violation!"
Yes.
Is Dean using the interet?
Yes, in the same way the dotcom people did and the Wincash people did before them.
-- $G
Bush is so grassroots man.. I mean.. he had people going door-to-door in florida.... Busting people's balls to stop them from voting! Buahaaha!
And to add some spice to this, DEAN is practically a Republican by 60s democrat standards. If you're going to go democrat, go progressive. Dennis Kucinich is a breath of fresh air amongst the "progressive" left with which we are left to choose amongst today. Whatever man, as long as it's not Lieberman!
pro-environment
pro-peace
anti-war
anti-death-penalty
ANTI-NAFTA and ANTI-WTO
...And I heard they were looking for grassroots 'linux people' to help with bringing their message online...
what else could you ask for? You've probably never heard of Kucinich since they don't have the same $ budget. And I was just thinking.. you know, if they really wanted to get some good decent donations coming in, they should just advertise on slashdot!
-david
Back before the 2000 election, I was getting spammed by the Democratic National Committee, and I couldn't get anyone to care. Why is this different?
Clear, Dark Skies
Hey Micheal,
Was your friend complaining becuase he received that e-mail unsolicited? It not clear from your post. I receive a ton of stuff from Dr. Dean, but I signed up for it.
Also, was there an opt out clause at the bottom?
There is spam and then there is SPAM.
It seems you are saying "using notorious spamhauses to send out the actual email" as a criteria for spamming, and as far as I know, that is just not the case.
Dean for America: Capital Punishment
Dean supports the death penalty and says so right on his own website. As for your point that since there is no death penalty in Vermont Dean does not support the death penalty. This, of course, is a specious arguement. Vermont has no death penalty because to the people of Vermont. It seems that if Dean had his choice he'd reinstate it over the objections of his constituents.The death penalty is wrong on all levels. Killing someone in the name of justice is nothing more than murder and revenge. It's a punish with no appeal and with no chance to change if incorrectly given. Since the Supremes reinstated the death penalty over 100 people destine for death have been proven innocent by parties outside the goverment. Two people have been exonerated after their executions. There is no justice for them.
Dean's positions are seldom troglodyte thumbs up thumbs down on any issue but rather considered and nuanced positions based on evaluation of facts."
Some call that "waffling".
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
How about howarddean?
Check the journal...
-- Dean for President, unless McCain runs again!
I know that this is mostly off-topic, but after reading a lot of the posts on here saying that Bush will beat Dean in an election I just have to say this.
Everyone is talking like Bush actually won the election in 2000. Well, technically, he did because he got the majority of electoral college votes, after Florida was given to him when the Supreme Court basically denied yet another recount of votes.
However, the tone of discussion implies that Bush also won the general election in 2000, which he did not. Lest we forget, more people actually voted for Gore than voted for Bush. I distinctly remember the news casters going on and on about this and how this hasn't happened since President Buchanan or some such.
Think about that before you start saying that it will be a landslide for Bush in '04. Keep in mind, too, that a lot of people are unhappy with how his administration is running, or not running, the country's business.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
I have to agree- Dean is a total putz! Did anyone see him on Meet the Press??? Wow, this guy embarrassed himself.
I imagine any candidate should use the internet, and you better believe they will spam to win. Its all about $$ - and if they can spam and get out their name, I have no doubt in my mind they will. $$ is everything in this corrupt system.
I'm an independent and I found Dean just as politically wrong as Bush. Unfortunately the 2 party system has let us down again with polorized views of the world. The politicans are going to force issues that have no effect on our daily lives... and how did we let Bush get all of this religion in government?
When Dean talks its completely nonsense. Just listen to what he is actually saying. Its meaningless.
If we work from Jan to May just to pay taxes, don't you think there should be enough money to run government??? None of the candidates want to talk specifics... they just say raise or lower taxes. Those words are meaningless!
"Religion, politics, society are exploiting you, and you are being conditioned by them; you are being forced in a particular direction. You are not human beings; you are mere cogs in a machine. You suffer patiently, submitting to the cruelties of environment, when you, individually, have the possibilities of changing them." - Krishnamurti
In fact, I did meet a really hot chick
but then
as I fucking hate bush
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
Since I like you, I will send you get rich quick spam. Who could turn down an offer like that?
A blog and a web site done by a professional web site designer = t3h Net Savvy!
So he has an online diary and a web monkey, so what?
I would think most people would reconize this whole thing as the PR gimmick it is.
The trolls would try this.
I much prefer shaved, isn't it obvious?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
A lot of people think Bush's frat-boy history as a coke-using, drunk-driving, AWOL, ne'er-do-well might disqualify him from the presidency. Apparently his brother, the Fla. sec. of state, the Supreme Court disagree. Oh, and all those Jews who voted for Buchanan on the butterfly ballot helped, too. Other people think that Bush's Goldwater-esque right-wing Administration, which has thrown out a century of diplomatic precedent and can't balance a budget, might disqualify him from a second term. Apparently not.
C'mon--if he's really net-savvy, he'd know that "opt-in" means something else to bulk emailers (you didn't say you don't want it) and that emailing people to vote for you would be a bad/pointless idea, anyhow...
I'm getting spammed by Kerry. I signed up for some online petition he sponsored, which apparently also signed me up for his newsletters (it didn't say anything about that), so I tried unsubscribing. Then I got a second mail. So I tried unsubscribing again. Then I got a third mail, this time I just responded, according to the mail, to the campaign manager, explaining that the mails are considered spam and they need to remove me from their list.
I just got a fourth mail. So now I just treat them as spam and report them with all due speed.
Hi guys, I am the CEO of EmailResults.net. I founded the opt-in business in 1997 by working with teams of intelligent people like yourselves who also hated spam but knew their could be a legitimate industry for relevant marketing content based on individuals true interests. I can tell you we do not run and hide with fake headers, hijack mail servers or deliver irrelevent "get rich quick scams" or porno crap. We are and were one of the two vendors Dean recruited. However, the error that Dean made was to use any company sourced out of Boca Raton for email marketing. They all use the Naviant untargeted list of 100 million email names harvested in 1998 by eDirect. We delivered to a list of 175,000 know democratic voters in 5 states. We received two complaints from Dean supporters who did not like the delivery mechanism behind his message. All of our headers, data used was all legit. I formed an alliance with Jim Nitchels, one of the original founders of CAUCE (now deceased) in 1997 to create the industry. Walt Rines (brother and Sanford Wallace) was also involved but were two conceited people who did not care about real relevence in email marketing and did not want to pay a penny to network admins like yourselves who were and are trying to protect individual rights of privacy and keep your networks up and running. I took the time to understand the real issues by listening to the sys admins and create and industry that once again is being pissed on by greedy people. The premise of "opt-in" email marketing as defined by the spam advocy groups and myself at the time was about: 1) Delivering relevant content to individuals who have stated an interest in a product or service 2) Have given true consent to receive messages 3) Paying the networks for bearing the burden of legitimate marketing messages. 4) Parterning with such companies to receive the demographic and interest points of each subscriber then sending a confirmation to the subscriber confirming relevant interests BEFORE marketing piece one went out. I have three of four legitimate competitors who still actually conform with such standards. However, the other hundreds who have a website and sell email marketing, do not adhere to such practices. Therefore, companies and politicians alike invariably make the wrong choices and recruit companies which are completely shady. It's a shame and a learning experience for Dean no doubt, who is a good man trying to tackle some tough issues. I invite additional posts, direct dialogue and your feedback as I have recently become involved with again trying to tackle the problem of defining to the nation what legitimate email content is vs. spamming. If we want a true solution, it will be those of us that run the networks and Internet and gets it done together as it happened in 1997. I can tell you the biggest challenge I have seen to change the industry. It is the attitude of big business who feel they do not have to pay delivery services to send legitimate email content over the networks. I find this baffling as TV advertisers pay ABC, NBC, MTV and other major netowrks to deliver the message over the air. Same with radio. Direct postal gets delivered over the US Postal Service who is getting paid to do this. Why do we not have any real action happening about really killing spam and defining legitimate newsletter, marketing content? Greed from big business. This should change and can change but requires an alliance similar to the one I spoke about in 1997. The true solution of killing spam is to bring big business and the major netorks together which I helped facilitate in 1997. There are plenty of technical solutions to monitor and filter junk mail vs. legitimate email content. However, you can use the drastic technology measures until big business and the networks decide what relevant content is vs. spamming. It is the definition that is lacking. Good luck to you all. Figured I would lend my two cents into this discussion. Best Regards, Jason C. Rines CEO EmailResults.net