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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?"

7 of 432 comments (clear)

  1. ipchains by SHEENmaster · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    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.
  2. Re:Dean Kamen would never spam... by the+MaD+HuNGaRIaN · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    What's "segway"? Is that one of those multi-level marketing schemes?

  3. Re:Why does a supposedly "net savvy" campaign... by notque · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Probably for the same reasons spammers everywhere continue to do it: some people will click on the pretty colors - they get results.

    Do you really think he was being malicious as opposed to someone in his team being moronic?

    --
    http://use.perl.org
  4. Re:you know... by rmohr02 · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    First of all, I am liberal (but not a Democrat--I hate both parties, just not equally), and I know next to nothing about politics.
    This guy can be turned directly into the scion of leftist antiwar evil with a few carefully placed TV ads
    I honestly think that if the Democrat who wins the nomination (preferrably Dean or Kucinich for me) puts up a bunch of TV ads about the USA PATRIOT Act, they'll at least counter the anti-war stuff Bush's campaign would say.
  5. Re:Democrats [OT] [RANT] by HBI · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    In essence you bring up a lot of good points. Your style is a bit bombthrowing, but you are telling it like it is. One thing you neglect is that, while the Democrat party is a 'big tent' with lots of little constituencies, they generally come together for a sufficiently charismatic candidate. Also, Democrats can win on the back of a big scandal. Take a look at the last two big Democrat victories in 1976 and 1992.

    In 1976, Watergate was the issue, and Carter promised us he would 'never lie to the American people'. Therefore, we elected him. He was right - he wouldn't lie to us. He was just kind of ineffectual at governing.

    In 1992, there was no governing issue beside the economy, and Clinton ran with it. He was the best politician I have seen in my life, and better than anyone noted in history since FDR. He played the game like a skin flute, welding together the disparate elements of the Democrat 'constitutency' into a single bloc. Also, Perot helped by drawing off moderate votes. I think Clinton would have won anyway in 1992 even without that, though.

    I can't see any of these candidates in 2004 pulling either of the previous tricks off. Maybe they can come up with a new one. Not likely.

    --
    HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
  6. Re:you know... by rmohr02 · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    I disagree completely. I think the Bush ads will be much more effective since most people will know what he is talking about, while PATRIOT Is a non-issue to most people.
    Well, the Democratic candidates can talk about the reasons for the war, which may have been less than perfect (I'm sure more will come out about this in the coming months). Anyway, I'm not an expert in how public opinion is changed.
  7. A point i'd like to make. by panda · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    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.

    --
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