As if spam by itself isn't enough of a pain in the rump roast, the run-up to Election Day has featured a tidal wave of aggressive and mostly negative spam aimed at both President Bush and his challenger, U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Massachusetts).
MailFrontier reported that almost a fifth of those it polled or examined said some of the political spam could impact their vote, based on MailFrontier’s sampling of a thousand American Netizens of voting age. And while the politickers might be encouraged, analysts say, consumers might be reaching for the Tylenol.
"Spam is like blasting a microphone to the world," MailFrontier chairman Pavni Diwanji told reporters, after his company revealed that almost 1.4 billion messages tied to the presidential elections have been sent since August, jumping 300 percent in September.
Some of the presidential spam has been rather witty, of course, such as the anti-Kerry ticket spam that showed an image of toilets marked with the names of Kerry and his running mate, Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina), beneath a sign saying "Flush the Johns." Or, there was a fake email from President Bush showing a resume with various embarrassing "disclosures," according to some reports.
As it is, both Bush's and Kerry's parties are themselves stepping up their email outreach. The Republicans are believed to have 3 million email subscribers who get weekly messages and pass them in turn to others they know, while the Democrats and the Kerry campaign each have over 5 million email addresses, party officials have told reporters.
But there's also a flip side to the swelling of political spam – spam using political themes or lead-ins to push the usual suspects: porn sites, drugs, financial schemes. That, according to another email security company, Mirapoint. And even the virus writers are couching their mischief in political jokes or references this season, according to marketing director Jeff Brainard.
