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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).
Just a thought.
sPh
...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
*twitch*
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.
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/
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
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."
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
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.
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
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.
Oh, Then I don't want Howard Dean to be my canidate. I was misinformed.
I will only vote for people who can configure a Cisco router. That way, I am assurded that their political stances, and agendas coincide with mine.
http://use.perl.org
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
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.
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.
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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.
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!
This happens more often then you think. In my home town during a recent election the republicans sent out mailings pretending to be from the communist party endorsing the democratic candidate. Too bad the democrats did not retaliate by sending out mailing from the white supremacists endorsing the republican candidate. Although that would not have the same impact since the local white supremacists were endorsing the republican candidate.
War is necrophilia.
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