Just in time to get rid of all the annoying political ads on TV and radio leading up to the Michigan primary, GOP presidential wannabe Mitt Romney has been crowned King of political spam. His high-profile run as the leader for the 2012 nomination for the US presidential election has made him popular with spammers.
Mitt Romney is also the favorite politician of spammers. He is used to tout knockoff drugs and dubious bargains in junk e-mail according to a Bitdefender analysis of 8 million unsolicited messages spread in January.
Romney is mentioned in 45% of SPAM messages that reference US politics, ahead of second-placed Republican Newt Gingrich, who scored 33%. Romney’s name was most often used in scam messages that advertise low-interest loans or free credit score analysis while Gingrich was mentioned in junk mail promoting miraculous energy-saving devices that almost certainly don’t exist. The article says most of these offerings actually redirect the unwary user to survey site scams or knockoff drugs for sexual dysfunctions.
U.S. Republican hopeful Ron Paul came third in the BitDefender spammers’ list, with 12.2%. The most popular politician outside the Republican race that caught the spammers’ attention this year was Bill Clinton, with 4%.
“Winning Most-Mentioned Politician in Bitdefender’s spam survey is probably not an honor that many politicians want,” said Bitdefender E-Threats Analyst Bogdan Botezatu, who coordinated the spam study. “And I don’t think we’ll see spammers suddenly turning into political pundits. But the results could tell us which politicians spammers think are most likely to get a reaction from random e-mail readers. Spammers are, ultimately, after money and they’re essentially making a bet on popularity when they favor one politician’s name over another.”
The author says spam messages often use names of celebrities or politicians in fragments of news items in trying to give credibility to the message and to trick anti-spam filters that look for the percentage of links versus other words in the message.
In the BitDefender overall analysis of spam not filtered to include only political references – the Republican politicians were handily beat by celebrities including Jay Leno, Eva Longoria, Kobe Bryant, and even political commentator Rush Limbaugh.
rb-
I wrote about spammers hijacking celebrities ‘ identities to spread spam. In the past, Jay Leno and Heidi Klum have been called the most dangerous celebs on the web.
Related articles
- Santorum Leading Romney In Michigan? (outsidethebeltway.com)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Cyberwar: Countries are vulnerable due to massive dependence on computer systems and a cyber-defense that primarily defends only government and military networks. Many countries realize the crippling potential of cyber attacks against critical infrastructures, such as water, gas, and power, and how difficult it is to defend against them. McAfee Labs expects to see countries prove their cyberwar capabilities in 2012, to send a message.
