Obama Beats McCain In Spam Landslide 154
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."
Google is evil! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Google is evil! (Score:3, Interesting)
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!
Hint: Using the N word will get something censored.
Re:ahhh in a perfect world... (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Political interest? (Score:5, Interesting)
"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.
Re:You too? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a hypothesis: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=Break+in+Republican+laptop [google.com]
Another hypothesis could be that people are signing up their "friends" (often inadvertently, but sometimes on purpose). This was really popular back in college (as I recall) by signing up known person's emails as a prank.
Remember at the Dem's convention they were collecting cell phone numbers of the numbers of family and friends of the Dem Convention attendees cell phones.
Another variant on this is that someone is likely harvesting addresses from the headers from those silly blanket-her-entire-email-list jokes my sweet and dear 65-year-old aunt keeps sending the whole family et al following her discovery of the "free postage" part of email.
If I ever forward any message to a large group, I BCC them all...
Based on this, I would not put it past them... http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=acorn+voter+registration+fraud&aq=1&oq=ACORN+voter+registration+fraud [google.com]
It is notable that Mr. Obama was a very strong 'community organizer' for this group and he actively donated his lawyerly skills for the group's benefit for years as well.