The Next Window

Ever wonder where political candidates get your addresses? Or what they do with them?

I have received a couple pieces of political “spam” from one of our State’s politicos who is planning to run again for governor.

The name and email address in the “To” address, that he used for me, are what make this interesting.

I’ve long thought that political candidates got their mailing lists from their political parties offices, which would be ok assuming that we had provided those addresses to them.

I’ve also believed that they got them from voters registration and other public records.

Of course, those thoughts are about the physical addresses for real, put-your-hands-on it and it-costs-money-to-mail mail.

Now, though, one of our local gubernatorial candidates (unfortunately, the one for whom I would otherwise have voted), has sunk to a new low.

I’m getting unsolicited campaign email from Bobby Jindal. But, not on my regular email address that is fairly easy to obtain.

I’m getting emails on an email address at a domain name that I let my son use for spam control. In this case, he provided an email address to a web site about a computer game called Dante’s Awakening. Funny thing — I get a lot of spam on that address.

But, back to the case at hand…

While this political spam uses the email address that’s getting way too much commercial spam, his campaign workers took another step — one that was stupid.

They apparently matched the domain registration name to voter registration records.

That’s right, the “To:” name is my full name, complete with full middle name — which has never before been associated with that domain — and certainly was not the name provided to the Dante’s Awakening site, or all the other spam on that unique address would have that name, too.

Political candidates — be careful with your emails. Think twice about buying email address lists — even if the seller claims it is a “Safe List” — after all, the individuals did not agree to get spam from you.

Think again about deriving true names for the email “To:” fields.

Those of us who have domain names know exactly who you are — because we often register software and register at web sites with unique email addresses, just so we can see who is participating in spamming or selling our addresses.

By the way, I guess political spam must be exempted from the CAN-SPAM requirements, since this political spam had no provision for unsubscribing!

Thanks a lot, Bobby Jindal! Who’s running against you?