{"id":14087,"date":"2012-02-28T19:18:58","date_gmt":"2012-02-29T00:18:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbach.net\/blog\/index.php\/"},"modified":"2021-12-10T13:05:10","modified_gmt":"2021-12-10T18:05:10","slug":"romney-defeats-gingrich-in-us-spam-primaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/romney-defeats-gingrich-in-us-spam-primaries\/","title":{"rendered":"Romney Defeats Gingrich in US SPAM Primaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Romney<\/a>Just in time to get rid of all the annoying political ads<\/strong> on TV and radio leading up to the Michigan primary, GOP presidential wannabe Mitt Romney<\/strong>\u00a0has been crowned King of political spam<\/strong>. His high-profile run as the leader for the 2012 nomination for the US presidential election has made him popular with spammers.<\/p>\n

Mitt Romney<\/a>\u00a0is also the favorite politician of spammers. <\/strong>He is used to tout knockoff drugs and dubious bargains in junk e-mail according<\/a> to a Bitdefender<\/a> analysis of 8 million unsolicited messages spread in January.<\/p>\n

\"Mitt<\/a>Romney is mentioned in 45% of SPAM<\/a>\u00a0messages that reference US politics, ahead of second-placed<\/strong> Republican Newt Gingrich<\/strong><\/a>, who scored 33%. Romney\u2019s name was most often used in scam <\/a>messages<\/a> that advertise low-interest loans<\/strong> or free credit score analysis while Gingrich was mentioned in junk mail promoting miraculous energy-saving devices<\/strong> that almost certainly don\u2019t exist. The article says most of these offerings actually redirect the unwary user to survey site scams<\/strong> or knockoff drugs for sexual dysfunctions<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

U.S. Republican<\/a> hopeful Ron Paul<\/strong><\/a> came third in the BitDefender spammers\u2019 list, with 12.2%. The most popular politician outside the Republican race that caught the spammers\u2019 attention this year was Bill Clinton<\/strong>, with 4%.<\/p>\n

\"BitDefender<\/a>\u201cWinning Most-Mentioned Politician in Bitdefender\u2019s spam survey is probably not an honor that many politicians want,<\/em>\u201d said Bitdefender E-Threats Analyst Bogdan Botezatu, who coordinated the spam study. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll 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\u2019re essentially making a bet on popularity when they favor one politician\u2019s name over another<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The author says spam<\/a> messages often use names of celebrities or politicians<\/strong> in fragments of news items in trying to give credibility<\/strong> to the message and to trick anti-spam filters that look for the percentage of links versus other words in the message.<\/p>\n

\"Republican<\/a>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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

rb-<\/em><\/strong>
\nI wrote about spammers hijacking celebrities ‘ identities to spread spam. In the past, Jay Leno<\/a> and Heidi Klum<\/a> have been called the most dangerous celebs on the web.<\/em><\/p>\n

Related articles<\/h6>\n