Slashdot Mirror
Obama Beats McCain In Spam Landslide
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times runs an article about the spammers' choice of presidential candidate. From the article: 'According to Secure Computing Corp., spammers were nearly seven times more likely to slap Obama's name in the subject line than McCain's during September. The bulk of Obama's lead in the spam wars came from a massive blitz early in the month.' Secure Computing released additonal numbers for the past weeks, and McCain was able to close the gap in the latest spammers' poll."
This is such non-news. Does anyone really care who spammers use in a subject line for spam?
There is a war going on for your mind.
But who do the 419 scam jerks want?
Clearly there's no point in the spammers forging the send as McCain, he openly admits he doesn't know how to use email!
We have observed that negative posts on Obama have been deleted on Google, Yahoo, and various news/blog sites.
^(oo)^pig~
Spammers peddle in CHANGE (in size) and HOPE (for a lower mortgage rate).
A few more words... On youtube, Videos against Obama posted by Hillary/McCain supporters or independents have low click counts and posts against Obama are frequently missing. This begins the age of internet Big Brother!
^(oo)^pig~
Spammers know that as long as politicians back the opinion that the public can't take care of themselves, and the public believe this opinion, there will never be any incentive for the ISP or email provider to more thoroughly filter spam. Instead, any legislation against spammers will be at the federal level, and thus ineffective against those overseas. The spam will continue to flow.
Then again, McCain is for the same nanny-state, so this explains nothing!
Wow. Such an honor for Obama.
Seems to me that the spammers must be working on a basis of whatever words most likely to interest the reader into clicking further, so it's perhaps an indicator of how interesting "person X" is overall at a given time. I've seen various celebrity names pop up, and I believe that Obama's did awhile back before the newer spams containing Palin's name in conjunction with various sexual keywords.
So thats the trend, but how is it meaningful?
If the spammers are doing it, I assume thats because the majority of their target customers are aligned similarly with Obama. Makes sense, since Obama's online presence is considerably more progressive than McCains... Still doesn't say a whole lot about anything.
Overclockers
people willingly omitting slanderous and unfounded crap about other people from their websites has been here since the dawn of internet.
and the person you label as 'big brother' openly declares support about net neutrality and lectures about what freedom and equal opportunity means to internet and how it is tied to network neutrality on his website and policies.
dont spurt crap without knowing about what you speak about next time.
Read radical news here
Think about the age range of people between party lines. The republican party targets older voters who are not likely to even own a computer.
Not to mention that the Democrats are pushing the get out and vote to first time voters who are more tech-savvy.
Dumb and dumber don't care. They got your cash either way. It doesn't matter who sits in what seat.
Obama is the candidate of choice by nearly 90% of the rest of the world. It's no secret that if you want people to read your spam, you'll put his name in the header. He's popular.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Who cares who spammers want to be President? In a perfect world, their right to vote would be forfeited and they would be in a 10'x12' cell.
The game.
They're saying that Obama is a Nothing. Don't vote for him.
Um.... A.D.D. much?
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
Cute, so even slashdot spam generally follows these guidelines.
is the amount of spam email I get that is blatantly pro-Obama propaganda.
Either his campaign is hiring them, or someone who supports him is spending a HELL of a lot of money (and violating campaign finance laws) hiring them.
I don't vote for spammers or corrupt chicago crooks. Therefore, I won't vote Obama.
Depends on the SPAM header, but if we're getting a lot of any particular SPAM variety, then adding a rule which will tag+filter/trash it without killing off legit mail is part of the job.
I tried to submit stories on this MONTHS ago, after the Obama campaign somehow got my email and started sending me their constant spam messages. Content directly traced back, emails all about their campaign stops, from "David Plouffe", "Michele Obama", links to their blog entries on the official Obama site, etc... but the headers most DEFINITELY through known spam houses and zombie spam networks.
For some reason, Slashdot wasn't interested that the Obama campaign does this. I'd think it should be a major concern to us - not only is he corrupt, but he's in bed with the spammers. That doesn't bode well for tech issues for us if he gets elected...
You put Obama in the subject line for the same reason you you use pictures of attractive women to sell products. Obviously men want to look at hot women, but marketing research shows women are more drawn to, and persuaded by, pictures of attractive women. Not for any sexual reason but due to competitive pressures women feel.
Right wingers can't get enough Obama email. Claiming he's a Muslim, talking about how much he hates America, tying him to terrorists, questioning his ethnicity, etc. I know because I have friends that forward it to me.
On the other hand, the lefties are so excited to finally have another candidate that can appear both intelligent AND human, after Kerry and Gore, they can't see/hear/read enough about Obama.
the true choice of spammers for president is "penis"?
...nominated Giant Tallywhacker?
rj
Of COURSE the bulk of the emails would come with Obama's name in the subject line - everyone knows McCain is computer illiterate! Oh, and very few care to hear about McCain anyway.
Spammers want to reach as many people as they can, and if they think Obama is ahead in the polls (whether he is or not), then they'll pick his name for the subject.
Lets see how many mod points I get for my post subject.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" Franklin
Rep. Ron Paul is still not impressed. ;-)
Because it is easier for them to spell.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
McCain says "I want to invade your vaginas"
do you also prefer women with hairy legs, hairy armpits, and a moustache?
Looks to me like the spammers think Obama supporters are more gullible than McCain supporters. . . .
. . . . Either that, or McCain supporters are less apt to have email accounts. . . .
There; I've been an equal-opportunity insulter, don't you think?
];)
Regards;
Just have a look at intrade.com. You can buy shares on the probability of Obama vs. McCain winning. The contracts on Obama now are statospheric. Want the best barometer? It is how people bet their money!
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
Small problem:
I NEVER signed up for Obama campaign mail. In fact, after they repeatedly ignored my unsubscribe demands, I called them via voice to demand they remove my name and email from any of their lists (I don't need my work email clogged with their spam, I have enough trouble sorting what comes through that's actually relevant).
I can guarantee you, I've been receiving the same ones you are. The reply-to address changes names from "Barack Obama", "Michele Obama", "David Plouffe", etc, but the underlying address is always "info@barackobama.com" and it always has their "how to unsubscribe" boilerplate at the bottom that goes directly to a page that CLAIMS it'll remove the address from their lists, but never does.
# 2008 - Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the two last remaining independent investment banks on Wall Street, become bank holding companies as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis.
# 2008 - President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa resigns from office, effective September 25.
# 2008 - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel formally resigns from office, effective as soon as his successor Tzipi Livni has successfully assembled a new government.
# 2008 - Final baseball game played at Yankee Stadium
The header has to be set by the antispam app, which in turn has to identify/tag SPAM. The rules that cause spamassassin and others to weight things as SPAM can be adjusted, and a little manual tweaking can actually help a lot if you get the same SPAM rather redundantly.
...is to get the interest of a fool...and is that not the definition of an Obama supporter?
Wouldn't the old guy make a better v14gr@ spokesman?
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
After receiving my first unsolicited spam from the McCain campaign I used the unsubscribe link. Sure enough, the next spam arrived a couple weeks later.
To date I have received four unsolicited mails. I have used the unsubscribe process with each and every one and have even sent an email to the campaign through the contact form all to no avail.
I can't be the only one out there is experiencing this problem?
Look at this entire thread, including the posts modded into oblivion.
It's the best example of unintentional irony I've seen in years!
Sadly, people on both sides (but, this time around, primarily on the McCain side) are suffering from delusions of persecution and grandeur.
In reality, McCain's too old, Palin's too greedy and vicious, Obama is a wild card who is as likely to be a failure as a success, Biden's always been a drone, and the only difference between the Democrat and Republican parties is which orifice they grease up for the multinational corporations.
Obama's the best new candidate in years. McCain was a great choice around about 2000. Neither one is likely to be able to fix the Bush Economic Miracle in eight years or less.
The deliciousness continues! My captcha is "wakeup"!
Vegas stays in business because the majority of people lose more money then they win. I'm not sure that watching people going into debt is a good barometer.
that mentions any political geek....Spam just get deleted faster.
Joe Investor