Yes They CanPull Pranks
As the primaries chugged along in February, some pranksters apparently found their own path to change by signing up anti-spammers’ e-mail addresses and fake, insulting names on Barack Obama’s e-mail list.
As a result, people received personalized messages from the Democratic presidential candidate that addressed them in a rude manner.
For example, anti-spammer Edward Falk recently got an unsolicited e-mail from Obama’s campaign calling him StupidSpamSucker SlutFace, according to a post on his Spam Diaries blog.
And while the messages are probably the result of a childish prank, they also have the potential to threaten Obama’s ability to communicate with supporters by e-mail.
Those on the receiving end of this prank are on the front lines of the war against spam and are involved to some degree or another with the Internet’s various anti-spam blacklists.
The snafu apparently came about because Obama’s e-mail registration process has no verification mechanism and allows any first and last name to be registered with any address. Other candidates also don’t have a verification e-mail that warns people they’ve been added to a list, but their sign-up processes are a bit more complicated and less vulnerable to similar antics.
Though Obama’s IP addresses aren’t showing up on any of the major blacklists yet, his e-mail efforts are in danger of being blocked as long as his e-mail opt-in process is unconfirmed, especially now that anti-spammers have become aware of his loose e-mail policy.
“If the spam continues, they do risk having their mail filtered,” says Deirdre Baird, chief executive of e-mail deliverability consultancyPivotal Veracity.
