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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?"
...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
A link near the bottom of the "technical details" page indicates that Dean was responsible. The page goes on to imply that it was foolish/irresponsible but unintentional.
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.
-- jetlag --
*twitch*
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.
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.
Why wasn't this tidbit of info in the original post? Sounds like the submitter may have had an axe to grind. Slashdot mods should be more vigilant and not allow this kind of thing to slip by, the things at stake are too important.
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
Getting round spam filters turns out to be the main technical skill the outsourcers provide.
I do not call this a skill. If I make a filter (not a spam filter, an EMAIL FILTER), then I do not want what I am filtering.
That means that you should not attempt to get around my filter to send me what you beileve I would like to recieve.
If I hang up on you, I do not want to buy your product, nor will I ever. Learn from this technique.
http://use.perl.org
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
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
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?