Spammers Use Holes In Democrats.org Security

Attila Dimedici writes "According to Cloudmark, 419 spammers are using the democrats.org website to relay email and bypass spam filters. 'The abuse, which dates back at least to the beginning of this month, helps evade filters that internet service providers employ to block the messages. ... The messages were sent courtesy of this page, which allows anyone with an internet connection to send emails. The PHP script employs no CAPTCHA or other measure to help ensure there is a real human being behind each email that gets funneled through the service. The service allows messages to be sent to 10 addresses at a time and even provides a way for people to import contacts they have stored in their address book.'"

Comments

Don't worry about schools

[davidwr]

If you ignore teen-on-teen sex, the number of times you see sex on K-12 school campuses is very small. The rare cases of teacher/student sex you see in the papers almost always happens off-campus.

A much better question is "how do I make sure my fiancee or his/her brother or father or uncle isn't a pedophile, and if he is, what am I going to do about it?"

Another very relevant question is "how do I make sure my kid's best friend's dad isn't a pedophile, and if he is, what am I going to do about it" or "how do I make sure my kid's teenage or adult babysitter isn't a pedophile, and if he or she is, what am I going to do about it?"

Remember: Police records only show those that have been caught - the smart ones don't get caught* - and they do NOT show all of those who received deferred adjudication or who were adjudicated as minors.

*The smart ones don't get caught unless they get unlucky. The very smart ones obey the law in the first place and aren't a concern.

--
Back to schools:

Schools do background checks on employees, volunteers, and vendors, and some even background-check regular visitors. Many schools escort visitors who are there for a pre-arranged visit. You will see random adults in the building on election day but they are usually confined to a small area of the campus and well monitored.

There is some risk during "Public School Day" or open houses or other times where the public is specifically invited into the building. However, most parolees and probationers who have a sex crime record know they aren't allowed in, and in some states registered sex offenders aren't allowed in schools at all without a specific reason, such as voting or visiting their kid's teacher. However, even this is negligible risk since kids are generally not at risk from abuse from adults they don't know well, even if that adult happens to be in a school building.

Some good news for worried parents:

Only about 0.1% of the population is on the sex-offender registry. At any given time, the number of people out there who are at risk to have sex with children or underaged teens is quite small. The odds of you bumping into one of them and that person taking an interest in your child is even smaller. The odds of the person getting very far with your child is smaller still, and is practically zero if you've taught your child how to say "no," run away, fight back, call for help, etc. AND it's well-known that your kid knows how to say "no" defend himself. Criminals generally won't take a chance if they know they will get caught.

Re:Don't worry about schools

[commodore64_love]

With that kind of talk you'll never get elected to office. It's much more effective to use scare tactics like, "There are sex offenders everywhere and we must crack down. I'll make sure to enact new laws that give sex offenders lifelong sentences, such that they will be tracked by the government until the day they die!"

That's how you win votes.