Is the Dean Campaign Spamming? 432
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.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Net Savvy. Not (Score:4, Interesting)
Now how can they defend that? Spamming is worse than junkmail as the recipient has to pay rather than the sender. And before anyone say just press the delete key how do you do that on that average 3000 spams I get a month?
Rus
Dept. of Nasty Tricks (Score:4, Interesting)
Just a thought.
sPh
Is political speech spam? (Score:2, Interesting)
If we did not have any spam, the kinds listed above, would anyone complain about emails from persons running for public office?
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.
Then again, I guess those of us who are interested in politics could sign up with the individual campaigns to recieve emails.
The one thing I think everyone can agree on, is do not use known spammers. Do not validate what they do, so they can later say they deliver important speech.
It Works (Score:2, Interesting)
Ah, spam, politics, and good ol' capitalism (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe, or (Score:3, Interesting)
The other possibility is that this might actually work. They are probably sending messages to 'known democrats' who signed their emails when they registered for the party or whatever (I live in IA and I've been getting a lot of calls from democrats and pollsters on my Cell, which they must have gotten from my registration).
Btw, just to defend the fact that I'm actually 'registered' to a political party. I liked both McCain and Bill Bradley (who ran against Gore in '2000), but the democratic primary was closer to my dorm room (the republican one was all the way across campus) and I figured there was a better chance of meeting a hot chick at the dem. Primary. Also, a friend of mine knew a guy working on the Bradley campaign so we were invited to the campaign HQ in Des Moines after the vote, which was kind of cool.
In fact, I did meet a really hot chick and she decided to come up to Des Moines with us, which was pretty cool.
It also worked out well, as I fucking hate bush.
Dean Campaigners are Net Savvy (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
All bulk email houses are 'suspicious' (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
campaign spamming (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:Net Savvy. Not (Score:3, Interesting)
So unless there is a resonable chance you could want the email, don't send it.
Who decides what resonable chance is?
Get a spam filter.
Re:Who is calling the Dean Campaign 'Net Savvy'? (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you looked at deanforamerica.com [deanforamerica.com]? I'd say that site is a good indicator of Internet-awareness. The man has a *blog* [blogforamerica.com], for crying out loud! Actually, all the Democratic candidates are trying to capitalize on the Internet, which is IMHO a Good Thing, though it's taking some of them longer than others.
Contrast Dean's site with Bush's [georgewbush.com] (ooh, shiney) for a good illustration of why the former is considered "net-savvy." (yes i know incumbents don't need to mobilize as early as challengers, yes i know Bush's site is a "temporary site," but Dean's campaign is still a masterful example of how to mobilize the internet community. i long for the day when the *president* writes a daily weblog.)
Oh, and if you think Dean is another Democrat who is against everything Slashdotters hold dear, check out some of his posts [lessig.org] on Lawrence Lessig's blog [lessig.org]. (Kucinich has some interesting things to say here [lessig.org] as well. He's even pro-GPL!)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:All bulk email houses are 'suspicious' (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a real world example. I wrote an application so that staff in our college could go to a web page and send mail to the students of our college, either all students or by class year. Not wanting every person to see every other person's e-mail, I initially set this program up to bcc everyone and send a copy to the Deans as the to: recipients so they would know what the students got and I put a generic address as the from: so the students could hit reply and have it go to a central account but they could also see the deans' addresses to e-mail them.
Unfortunately, this got flagged by places like Hotmail and Yahoo as spam because I had just bcc'ed a large number of people.
So I had to send the messages out one at a time as individual messages, not as one message with a huge number of recipients.
I believe it is this kind of spam filter, cases where there is a legitimate reason to send mail to thousands of recipients without letting the recipients see each other's addresses, that the original poster was referring to.
And that is a legitimate use. I can understand that, and I hadn't considered spam filters that people put in place without knowing what is filtered. I.E. Yahoo and Hotmail's spam filtering.
But your point is also valid when considering what I would want or not. I would want something from a university that I was attending, and would not want anything from someone shilling their campaign through my email.
If I want to take the measures to learn about your campaign, then I will do so. I do not want it force fed to me (aside from the media.)
If it's okay for a campaign to mass email, then it is okay for a company trying to sell their products through mass email.
Which means, I get a lot of mass email. I already get more junkmail through the normal postal system than I do actual email. I honestly just don't want it. Do I not have a choice in this matter?
Re:Dean does not control what volunenteers do... (Score:5, Interesting)
Method, not content, is what makes spam. (Score:3, Interesting)
(As to the "Consent, not method" definition: I think this definition is less useful than "bulk email from a stranger" because currently you do have a right to other forms of non-consent based communications, so courts might not look kindly on laws that take that right away. Especially any rules that prevent individual emails from one person to another)
You have a right to free speech. You don't have a right to free free speech. Just because you can't afford a billboard doesn't give you the right to substitute inexpensive spraypaint grafitti instead. Just because you can't afford a radio commercial doesn't give you the right to use a bullhorn in a high-school football game crowd. Just because you can't afford printing costs for a mail campaign doesn't give you the right to steal a stamp machine. Just because you don't want to work to get an opted-in email list doesn't give you the right to hijack relays, fake return addresses, and do the other 'take resources without any payment' that spammers do.
Re:All bulk email houses are 'suspicious' (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:Oh no! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Perhaps.... (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, so let's get this out of the way. Political people have to eat crow on a regular basis when campaign tactics appear to be silly or stupid or craven or whatnot. This is just such a case.
Instead of coming up with innovative reasons why Dean is right or shouldn't be blamed, they should be contacting their man via his volunteer network and getting him to shape up. Every presidential candidate has had to apologize or reform when his campaign does something embarrassing. This is just such a case.
Who are the two vendors? (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, are you guys going to put a press release out on the site noting that the campaign has terminated the relationship with emailresults.net and eScriptions.com? Those are the two vendors you are referring to, correct?
Re:All bulk email houses are 'suspicious' (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why I have test accounts on all of the major free e-mail providers, so I can see what the students will get when we send them messages. I'm noticing a fair chunk of our students using free providers instead of the university's mail servers because the accounts will be around after they graduate.
I would want something from a university that I was attending, and would not want anything from someone shilling their campaign through my email.
The other thing I did was prepend our college name in squre brackets to the subject, like many e-mail lists do. Makes it simple for the recipients to filter the messages we send out, and whether they get filtered to the trash or not is up to them.
Howard Dean: The Un-Bush (Score:3, Interesting)
Dean will win the Democratic primary. Dean will lose the general election.
But then, the democratic race has always been a race to find out who is going to lose to Bush. The country has moved frightenly to the right in the past few years, and despite how many fucked up things Bush does, he's still popular. IMO, Dean has the best chance to win, but it's still not enough.
First and foremost, the democratic base likes to see someone with a backbone come out against Bush. Someone who didn't belly over after September 11th and vote for all these horrendous laws. Secondly, you talk about "Middle America", filled with people that you presume would never vote for an anti-war candidate. That may be true, but they'd never vote for a pro-war Democrat either. Why vote for Kerry or Lieberman instead of Bush, when all they do is talk about how great Bush is?
It is not sufficient to simply mimick your opponent. The Coke vs. Pepsi argument has lasted for decades because they're different and they appeal to different people. If one simply copied the other, they wouldn't be around for very long. Kerry and especially Liberman are trying very hard to be the Shasta Colas of the world. Dean, on the other hand, is more like 7-Up: the un-cola.
But this spam isn't *from* emailresponse.net... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Lt. Calley Defense? (Score:4, Interesting)
But Dean uses a blog!
Dean takes contributions online!
Dean's an opportunist like the rest. He was a nobody, then realized he had some support with the "net-savvy" crowd, and embraced it. Big frickin' deal.
Does he run the damn blog? Does he code his own site? It's like saying John Kerry is "print-savvy" because his campaign makes yard signs.
If you like Dean because you like his ideas, great. But let's not get carried away with labelling him "net-savvy" because his campaign saw an opportunity to capitalize.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Official Dean For America Response (Score:3, Interesting)
A simple link to your slashdot profiles from a page on deanforamerica.com that isn't linked to from anything but your reply to me or anyone else who asks this question would serve as proof.
I'm a Dean supporter, but I'm also a cynic.
Re:All bulk email houses are 'suspicious' (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't your customers find this a bit annoying? Or a bit intrusive that you are watching their email? Or maybe this is just for those customers who are sending out mass emails, in which case I can easily see that being something you've talked about with them ahead of time that specifically applies to mass email only. I'm mostly curious. I would be fairly annoyed if my ISP was doing this to my regular email.