Spam the Vote: Ron Paul Spam Surfs into Inboxes

Political Spam Goes Web 2.0

Accusations that supporters of Paul are using spammy tactics to promote the candidate don't stop with e-mail. The suspicious point out that Paul garners a disproportionate amount of support online (as measured by Web-based polls, mentions in blogs, and frequency of Web searches conducted by users related to "Ron Paul") compared to voter interest polls conducted offline. That fact may suggest Paul's online supporters are stuffing the virtual ballot by voting early and often at political polling Web sites.

Benton chalks up the lopsided support online verses offline by noting that Paul has won some of the tech savvy-voters by supporting issues such as an Internet unfettered by government regulation.

While current Paul-promoting political spam poses little security threat to users, spam that promotes candidates could overwhelm the systems used to block unwanted e-mail, say security experts.

Last presidential election MailFrontier, now owned by SonicWall , reported that in days leading up to the 2004 presidential election one percent of all spam -- more than 40 million messages daily -- were political. Spam topics included both President Bush and Sen. John Kerry.

This campaign season is likely to see spammers adopting new technology to get their candidates' messages out, moving beyond botnets that spew spam. One technique is called Google bombing, which tricks a search engine's ranking algorithms by flooding the Web with links and sites of a certain theme. Google bombs were used last year against 50 Republicans up for re-election. Liberal bloggers at Direct Democracy admitted to targeting the Republicans and did their best to influence Google search results to refer searches for candidate information to unflattering Web sites and articles about individuals running for office.

Brace Yourself

Unsolicited political messages are specifically exempt under the federal CAN-SPAM Act, which sets rules for mass messaging and provides penalties for violations. Mass mail must provide the actual source as a return address and offer an opt-out from future mailings. However, any use of bots to disguise the source of e-mail is illegal.

Other types of expected political spam beyond the inbox variety are so-called splogs or comment spam, which is an automated technique used to add comments to blogs or create Web pages promoting a commercial or -- in this case -- political cause. Other recent techniques of spamming include people who create decoy YouTube videos that promise one thing but deliver a commercial or political message.

The reason we see this is because in a tight race spam (in its various incarnations) can shape public opinion just as spammer peddling diet pills always find customers, says Andy Klein, SonicWall product marketing manager.

And this, mind you, is the dark side of political spam, not to be confused with the volumes of legitimate political e-mail from candidates and their supporters sent by legitimate e-mail channels that is also likely to multiply in our inboxes over the next 12 months.