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."

Comments

419

[InspectorxGadget]

But who do the 419 scam jerks want?

Re:419

[sesshomaru]

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson -- The Latest Nigerian 419 Scam Letter

Duh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly there's no point in the spammers forging the send as McCain, he openly admits he doesn't know how to use email!

Obama is the king on internet.

[dslmodem]

We have observed that negative posts on Obama have been deleted on Google, Yahoo, and various news/blog sites.

No surprise

[bugeaterr]

Spammers peddle in CHANGE (in size) and HOPE (for a lower mortgage rate).

Google is evil!

[dslmodem]

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!

Re:Google is evil!

[larry bagina]

Nobama?

Political interest?

[phorm]

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.

Re:Political interest?

[jrp2]

"I'm (hoping) analyzing spam headers is part of your job description, otherwise you have way too much spare time :D"

I know I look at my spam folder and could come up with similar "analysis" without spending much time or effort. It is usually pretty obvious what the trends are.

Most of us know that spam filters are not perfect, so we scan our spam folders for false positives. Every now and then I open one up, mostly just curious as to what the scam is.

A few months ago I opened one up. It was an email confirming my registration with some dating site. I was perusing it, looking for the scam, when I noticed it had the last 4 digits of the credit card used to open this account. Strangely, it was the same as my credit card!

I checked my bank website and sure enough, somebody was using my credit card. They foolishly used my email account, and I use unique email addresses when I buy things online. I canceled my card immediately and contacted the company associated with that email address.

I convinced them it was likely real and suggested they contact a security firm. Sure enough, a few days later, the FBI called and thanked me for being persistent and asked for any more info I had. They indeed had been hacked (SQL injection), about a year earlier, and about 90% of the credit cards used at that site over the last year had been canceled due to fraud.

In my case, I was able to cancel my card within hours of it being compromised, and about $1000 worth of fraudulent purchases wiped off my card with almost no questions. It would have been a lot uglier and more hassle if I did not catch this until the statement came. I now get a daily statement in email and scan it thoroughly.

Bottom line, a little basic analysis of your spam is a good idea. Doesn't have to be your job to find benefit. To the best of my knowledge nobody got busted, but that gaping hole was fixed, and that company now uses a trusted service for their shopping cart application.

Meaningful?

[I.M.O.G.]

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.

Re:Meaningful?

[Hognoxious]

I assume thats because the majority of their target customers are aligned similarly with Obama.

It could be the opposite - "OMG exclusive video of Obama eating babies !!!!eleventyone".

Disclaimer: Obama does not eat babies. But I heard he huffs kittens.

Obvious Link

[Kingrames]

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.

Re:Obvious Link

[eagee]

What are you saying, that the election is really a big popularity contest?! I feel so disillusioned.

Re:ahhh in a perfect world...

[Geoffrey.landis]

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.

This has nothing to do with who spammers want to be president. This has to do with whose name spammers think will get somebody to click on a link.

My estimate is, they're probably right. Obama supporters will clilck to see what their candidate is up to, and Obama opposers will click to see what their opposition is up to.

McCain, on the other hand, usually isn't up to anything much. I doubt either side would be easily lured into clicking a link, because he's pretty boring.

Re:Actually what I worry about more

[deroby]

Oh come on,
I've gotten plenty of Obama or/vs McCain mails too and I have a .be email address for gods sake.

These mails are NOT targeted, they are just sent out at random based on some lousy email-list; So yes, that implies they are coming from some spammer/bot-net.
However, receiving a mail from candidate X does not necessarily mean that X (or his spin-team) asked given spammer to send these out. Jumping to that conclusion is just bad-mouthing IMHO. In fact, I find it much more likely that
    * the spammer is simply sending out spam to un-train the filters
    * the spammer prefers candidate Y and tries to make X look bad by drowning people in annoying X-spam, whether Y paid given spammer for this or not is impossible for me to find out.
    * the message contains some malicious payload

Frankly, I don't care, it's going straight to the recycle bin anyway.

My Favorite So Far....

[gsmalleus]

Every once in a while I like to read the subjects of mail in my spam folder for my own amusement. My favorite so far was what seemed to be a McCain pro-war spam crossed with a Viagra ad.

McCain says "I want to invade your vaginas"