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Is the Dean Campaign Spamming?

Posted by michael on from the hmmmmmm dept.

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?"

27 of 432 comments (clear)

  1. Perhaps.... by pjdepasq · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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).

    1. Re:Perhaps.... by Wellspring · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This is one of Niven's Laws: There is not cause so just and noble that you can't find total idiots following it.

      OK, so let's get this out of the way. Political people have to eat crow on a regular basis when campaign tactics appear to be silly or stupid or craven or whatnot. This is just such a case.

      Instead of coming up with innovative reasons why Dean is right or shouldn't be blamed, they should be contacting their man via his volunteer network and getting him to shape up. Every presidential candidate has had to apologize or reform when his campaign does something embarrassing. This is just such a case.

  2. Net Savvy. Not by rf0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:Net Savvy. Not by notque · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      So unless there is a resonable chance you could want the email, don't send it.

      Who decides what resonable chance is?

      Get a spam filter.

      --
      http://use.perl.org
  3. Dept. of Nasty Tricks by sphealey · · Score: 4, Interesting
    It does occur to you that the Dean campaign might not be the ultimate source of that spam? That someone with a few thousand to burn and knowledge of the direct mail industry fired up a dirty tricks campaign to make it look as if the Deaners were responsible? Reference John McCain and the South Carolina "push polls".

    Just a thought.

    sPh

  4. Is political speech spam? by John+Seminal · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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."

  5. It Works by MrBiiggy · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Why does a supposedly "net savvy" campaign even think for one second that this approach is acceptable?
    Because it works, no matter how trivial it might be.
  6. Ah, spam, politics, and good ol' capitalism by Rho17 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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...
  7. Maybe, or by autopr0n · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
  8. Dean Campaigners are Net Savvy by Phoenix666 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  9. All bulk email houses are 'suspicious' by Zeinfeld · · Score: 4, Interesting
    If the person behind the story knew a bit more about the net he would know why every legitimate originator of a lot of emails is going to use an outsourcer and that without exception they are all listed as suspicious by anti-spam types.

    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/
    1. Re:All bulk email houses are 'suspicious' by notque · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Getting around spam filters is not just trying to get your e-mail client in an inbox that really matches one of the filters you have personally made.

      Here's a real world example. I wrote an application so that staff in our college could go to a web page and send mail to the students of our college, either all students or by class year. Not wanting every person to see every other person's e-mail, I initially set this program up to bcc everyone and send a copy to the Deans as the to: recipients so they would know what the students got and I put a generic address as the from: so the students could hit reply and have it go to a central account but they could also see the deans' addresses to e-mail them.

      Unfortunately, this got flagged by places like Hotmail and Yahoo as spam because I had just bcc'ed a large number of people.

      So I had to send the messages out one at a time as individual messages, not as one message with a huge number of recipients.

      I believe it is this kind of spam filter, cases where there is a legitimate reason to send mail to thousands of recipients without letting the recipients see each other's addresses, that the original poster was referring to.

      And that is a legitimate use. I can understand that, and I hadn't considered spam filters that people put in place without knowing what is filtered. I.E. Yahoo and Hotmail's spam filtering.

      But your point is also valid when considering what I would want or not. I would want something from a university that I was attending, and would not want anything from someone shilling their campaign through my email.

      If I want to take the measures to learn about your campaign, then I will do so. I do not want it force fed to me (aside from the media.)

      If it's okay for a campaign to mass email, then it is okay for a company trying to sell their products through mass email.

      Which means, I get a lot of mass email. I already get more junkmail through the normal postal system than I do actual email. I honestly just don't want it. Do I not have a choice in this matter?

      --
      http://use.perl.org
    2. Re:All bulk email houses are 'suspicious' by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      Owning and running an ISP, I think I can respond rather well to this point.

      Bullshit

      My customers who send mass emails know that they are being watched. I have an idea of how many customers each has, and I correlate that to their list sizes. If one suddenly comes up with 1,000,000 names, guess what? I know it's not legit.

      I had a telemarketing computer call one day with a message trying to rent mailing lists to the business. Near the end, the guy mentioned that I could rent their "35,000,000 piece opt-in email list". Bullshit. Nobody has the names of 35M people who want to receive trash in their email simply because there aren't 35M people like that on the entire planet.

      My customers likewise know that I am prone to pick a random email address from their list and ask them for more information about that person. Real name, company name, and telephone number. And I occassionally call them to verify. I don't have to worry about spammers.

      A little common sense goes a long way. You're obviously a Howard Dean fan, but let's face it, he's spamming. The argument that "he doesn't know any better", which is apparently what you're trying to make here, worked the first time.

      This is no longer "the first time". Understand?

      Michael

      --
      Do you have ESP?
    3. Re:All bulk email houses are 'suspicious' by jd142 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      And that is a legitimate use. I can understand that, and I hadn't considered spam filters that people put in place without knowing what is filtered. I.E. Yahoo and Hotmail's spam filtering.

      That's why I have test accounts on all of the major free e-mail providers, so I can see what the students will get when we send them messages. I'm noticing a fair chunk of our students using free providers instead of the university's mail servers because the accounts will be around after they graduate.

      I would want something from a university that I was attending, and would not want anything from someone shilling their campaign through my email.

      The other thing I did was prepend our college name in squre brackets to the subject, like many e-mail lists do. Makes it simple for the recipients to filter the messages we send out, and whether they get filtered to the trash or not is up to them.

    4. Re:All bulk email houses are 'suspicious' by Josuah · · Score: 2, Interesting

      My customers likewise know that I am prone to pick a random email address from their list and ask them for more information about that person. Real name, company name, and telephone number. And I occassionally call them to verify.

      Don't your customers find this a bit annoying? Or a bit intrusive that you are watching their email? Or maybe this is just for those customers who are sending out mass emails, in which case I can easily see that being something you've talked about with them ahead of time that specifically applies to mass email only. I'm mostly curious. I would be fairly annoyed if my ISP was doing this to my regular email.

  10. campaign spamming by Gryftir · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  11. Re:Who is calling the Dean Campaign 'Net Savvy'? by sparrow_hawk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Ehrm... (not connected w/ the Dean campaign or any other in any way, shape, or form -- I'm just an interested observer :)...

    Have you looked at deanforamerica.com? I'd say that site is a good indicator of Internet-awareness. The man has a *blog*, for crying out loud! Actually, all the Democratic candidates are trying to capitalize on the Internet, which is IMHO a Good Thing, though it's taking some of them longer than others.

    Contrast Dean's site with Bush's (ooh, shiney) for a good illustration of why the former is considered "net-savvy." (yes i know incumbents don't need to mobilize as early as challengers, yes i know Bush's site is a "temporary site," but Dean's campaign is still a masterful example of how to mobilize the internet community. i long for the day when the *president* writes a daily weblog.)

    Oh, and if you think Dean is another Democrat who is against everything Slashdotters hold dear, check out some of his posts on Lawrence Lessig's blog. (Kucinich has some interesting things to say here as well. He's even pro-GPL!)

  12. you know... by HBI · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:you know... by HBI · · Score: 2, Interesting

      By "war", you are referring to the unprecedented, unjustified, trumped-up, "pre-emptive" invasion of a non-threatening foreign country that is now costing the USA about a billion dollars and 3-5 American soldiers' lives every week, with no end in sight? Unless Bush pulls some Iraqi miracle out of his ass during the next year, I think ads showing that Dean is antiwar would be the best publicity Dean could ask for.

      You are about to be taught a rather severe lesson about American politics during this election cycle. Try not to be too disillusioned by what you see - it's just a reality check.

      I'm a cynic - you soon will be too.

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
  13. Re:Dean does not control what volunenteers do... by S.Lemmon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Heh heh, it's also possible his opponents are even *more* net savvy, and are sending spam in his name to make him look bad. If you think about it, it's an easy way to attack someone - if the spam is "promoting" you, it's almost impossible to prove you had nothing to do with it. With most spam the mailers used are unconnected to what's being "spamvertized", so anyone can send spam claiming to promote you.

  14. Method, not content, is what makes spam. by geekotourist · · Score: 2, Interesting
    If it is bulk email from a stranger, then it is spam. You want a definition that relies entirely on method, not content, because content based rules will push you into 'regulation of speech' issues, and you don't want to go there.

    (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.

  15. Re:Oh no! by numark · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Reading further into the story, however, it becomes apparent that Dean's campaign was unaware of the tactics of their outsourced marketing company. As soon as they were alerted to the fact that spam was being sent out in their name, they immediately terminated their contract with the outsourcer.

    The Dean campaign has been against spam heavily in the past. They do not support anyone who sends spam in their name. In this case, it was simply that the company that did their marketing misrepresented themselves as being an opt-in email list, but instead sent mass mailings to large numbers of people without Dean's consent. I can't really see how Dean can be blamed for something that was done without his knowledge or approval.

    --
    Want Slashdot headlines on your site? Try SlashHead
  16. Who are the two vendors? by bluelark · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Just to let you know, the dates on the two spams I've seen are August 14th and August 15th respectively. I've posted the headers for the August 14th spam on my site, which I'm sure you've seen by now.

    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?

  17. Howard Dean: The Un-Bush by Fred+Ferrigno · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  18. But this spam isn't *from* emailresponse.net... by bluelark · · Score: 2, Interesting

    go check the headers of the particular spam or better yet, go check the the HTML source.

  19. Re:Lt. Calley Defense? by whatch+durrin · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Mod parent up, you hypocritical slashdot sheep!

    But Dean uses a blog!

    Dean takes contributions online!

    Dean's an opportunist like the rest. He was a nobody, then realized he had some support with the "net-savvy" crowd, and embraced it. Big frickin' deal.

    Does he run the damn blog? Does he code his own site? It's like saying John Kerry is "print-savvy" because his campaign makes yard signs.

    If you like Dean because you like his ideas, great. But let's not get carried away with labelling him "net-savvy" because his campaign saw an opportunity to capitalize.

    --
    ***
    Radio Shack. You've got questions...we've got blank stares(TM).
  20. Re:Official Dean For America Response by rmohr02 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is there any way for us to know that you really work for the Dean campaign? Joe Trippi posted a couple comments in the last Dean story, and hasn't shown himself since.

    A simple link to your slashdot profiles from a page on deanforamerica.com that isn't linked to from anything but your reply to me or anyone else who asks this question would serve as proof.

    I'm a Dean supporter, but I'm also a cynic.