Today we see it wasn't only UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham)spam team that is working on this or noticing the trend.
McAfee is also talking about it.
...Imagine my surprise when I’m greeted by this lot over the weekend:Subject: Ron Paul Eliminates The IRS!
Subject: Iraq Scam Exposed, Ron Paul
Subject: IRS Fears Ron Paul?
Subject: Ron Paul Wins GOP Debate!
Subject: Ron Paul Exposes Federal Reserve
Etc.
They all linked YouTube searches for “ron paul” which results in the usual electoral propaganda you’d expect 372 days before an election.
Later in the day it changed however. With the usual addition of bayes poison, randomness in the subject lines and a tinyurl and no doubt some additional sending resources since they just burned a load, this campaign moved up a gear.
Subject: Ron Paul Wins GOP Debate! ydB
Subject: Ron Paul Wins GOP Debate! XZHMuk
Subject: Iraq Scam Exposed, Ron Paul qCnUa
Subject: IRS Fears Ron Paul? edukDy
Subject: Who Is Ron Paul? lyI
Subject: Ron Paul Stops Iraq War! nALGU
This is trivial stuff as I’m sure you can appreciate, but that tinyurl did catch my attention:
tinyurl 345s6g -redirects-> 301 Moved Permanently -to-> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeHWW5gbc0w
“This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.”
Now I have no idea what that video was (and frankly dear, I don’t give a damn!) but what struck me is that this would be a really efficient way to remove your competitions videos from youtube. I’m not picking on YouTube here, I believe almost any social site would do the same.There are 2 people I feel for in this messy situation: postmaster@*.gov and abuse@youtube.com
You’ll be seeing lots of this stuff in the coming months, the most worrying of which will be the false donation solicitations and finishing with incorrect dates for actual polling day!I wonder how many candidates have EV certs? or “security logos” on their donation sites.
From ComputerWorld:
There's no way to know whether it's being done by a misguided supporter, or by someone trying to embarrass the campaign. Wired notes that Paul's supporters tend to be a very tech-savvy bunch, and are very vocal online. Wired notes, "Some participants in the online political world have long suspected Paul's technically sophisticated fan base of manipulating online tools and polls to boost the appearance of a wide base of support."
No matter who's doing it, though, expect this to be only the beginning of online political dirty tricks by many others. When power, money, and egos are involved, things get very nasty very quickly. One way or another, it'll all show up online.
Now here is the amusing part... some of these illegal spamming emails are being used by those that spam our comment section and the comment sections of other blogs..... they are copying these illegal spam emails and pasting them directly in the comments.
Kooks beget kooks.
More from Wired News.
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