bad form

[cellio]

About a week ago I started receiving spam ("that you signed up for" -- um, no) from the Obama campaign. Complaints to their postmaster have gone unheeded (and have not bounced). My first letter took the tone of "this must be a mistake" and I commended them on the otherwise good experiences I've had with their campaign while asking them to correct this error; the second was closer to "you are reflecting poorly on your candidate". Still nada. As a matter of security I do not follow "unsubscribe" links in unsolicited email (who knows what they'll really do?), though I did go to their site (through the front door) and leave feedback reporting this problem.

The problem is not only continuing but escalating. I can set my spam filters to take care of this, but it's bad manners on their part and seems unwise when they want my vote.

If anyone reading this has ties to this campaign, you might want to tell them to knock it off. I would point out that the opposition has not stooped to spamming me so far. (If I'm really lucky, perhaps this post will snare a campaign person following referrer links.)

Comments

[laid.livejournal.com]

Did you email them asking a question? That's how I ended up on it. I read it for the lulz now.

[cellio]

I don't remember doing so.

[asim.livejournal.com]

The link _will_ unsubscribe. I know, because I had an extra email account on it; used the link to jump off, and get nothing else in that mailbox from the campaign -- or any other, for that matter.

Huckabee, on the other hand...*sigh*

[laid.livejournal.com]

But I'm in agreement with cellio on this, you shouldn't have to follow a link in an email to unsubscribe. It's also suspicious to have the link show up in the email as "http://my.barackobama.com/unsubscribe" when the link REALLY points to "http://my.barackobama.com/page/m2/55c134f1/5020dd93/74db363e/1188aed1/2291316260/VEsF/"

'cause that looks SO legit

btw, that first url, the one that appears, if you actually type it in, gets redirected to "http://my.barackobama.com/page/unsubscribe/".

That's also where it takes you if you click the link, with the same information. I'm guessing it's some sort of tracking thing to see which email caused you to unsubscribe from the list.

That's the url from the one that came out at 1:45am about Obama asking McCain to do something about the economy and being upstaged by McCain. Why didn't that come out minutes after the TV spot instead of hours? Is this a repeat of the 3am text message thing?

[asim.livejournal.com]

Let me put on my Web/Security Programmer hat, for a sec.
Many places, legit included, do this. Obama's site is built on a platform that does that kind of redirect all the time; for example, here's a link for "Reporting Objectionable Content" from a post on my blog, there:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/security/simple_report/DRFCRVlLSVkcHVJUQwRQCgxbUV9VGQZcDxZCAlFRGgcKCFtADQ0STUpDX0ZFSkQLC1BcXht0HAAS

It's not my preferred way of doing CMS, but it's far from illegitimate.

And yes, many sites DO encode the email in the link. And many of them do so, so that they can put the email into the box for the form to unsubscribe. It's not great, but yes -- there's just a paucity of people who can work on this, and that's true of most web stuff -- try actually talking to someone at Google or Yahoo about a problem over email. Hell, try finding a number!

So far as the email, it's nearly impossible to get email to millions of people at roughly the same time. SMTP (mail) servers are fast, but they will shut you down if you send too much at once, so it's been commented that the Obama Campaign sends out in batches. I have 2 emails, currently, that get emails from them; one copy of the email you reference came in at 12:28pm, the other at 3:18am.

Does that make sense?

[laid.livejournal.com]

It makes perfect sense from that standpoint, and I'd trust Obama's campaign to do the right thing with an url like that, but it looks a bit daunting to someone who's less trusting than I.

Did the email have the same unsubscribe target url? IOW, are they encoding other stuff in it?

[cellio]

That's not an unreasonable thing to do, so long as the folks doing it recognize that it makes their URLs cryptic and some folks will balk at that. I'd much rather see explict arguments (http://example.com/unsub.php?address=joeblow@maiilinator.com&source-msg=14a415 etc).

[scaharp.livejournal.com]

Oh, that does suck.

I "joined" the campaign recently, so I get the emails also. They're clearly an automated thing that gets sent to everyone on their list (it is curious how they got your address, though). I get one almost every day. Their postmaster is probably inundated with thousands of emails from folks like you who do not want to use the unsubscribe feature, so I would imagine it could take a few days to take care of it.

They've been so polite and reasonable in all other dealings I've had, and they stress that as well in their how-to-be-a-campaigner literature, so I have to imagine they *intend* to follow your directive reasonably soon, but haven't been able to yet.

Maybe since Asim says the unsubscribe link worked and didn't jeopardize his address, you could try that even though it's not your normal protocol.

I'm sorry about this, and if I speak in person to anyone in the campaign I'll mention it to them.

[cellio]

Thanks.

I wrote a procmail rule to auto-file their mail as spam. (I check my spam traps every day or two, so if an actual human being responds to my email complaint, I'll still see it.)

While it's not as big a factor as the security angle, another argument against the "go to our web site to get off our mailing list" approach is that it should be as easy to get off as to get on. This is true for everything, not just spammers. If I can subscribe to your hypothetical mailing list by sending email, I'd better be able to unsubsribe the same way. It's not legitimate to introduce any further hurdles, IMO. By participating in some sort of "a causal glance gets you on but it takes effort to get off" scheme, I help legitimize that, and that can't be good.

I do realize that standing on principle is a minority position. I can get an acceptable outcome by filtering; could I get a better one (less mail) by compromising the principle and using their link? Probably, but the acceptable outcome is good enough for me and the principle matters. (Again, security is still a bigger issue.)

[tashabear.livejournal.com]

You're not getting spammed by McCain because no one there knows how to use email, apparently (http://coloradoindependent.com/9151/oops-colorado-mccain-camp-sends-internal-e-mail-to-reporters).

[chaiya.livejournal.com]

*snort* You know you'll never get email from McCain himself -- he doesn't use email at all. :P

[cellio]

*laugh* Wow, I knew McCain doesn't know how to use email, but I figured he had staff members who do...

[starmalachite.livejournal.com]

No spam here from either candidate, but I really wish the McCain campaign would knock off the ^()*&^%! robocalls. Attempts to reach a human result in "mailbox full" messages.

[cellio]

The robocalls really annoy me. So far I haven't gotten any of those from either campaign, though I got a bunch (mostly Hillary) before the primary so I assume they're coming. I've received a few actual-person calls from Obama's campaign this fall, and not a peep from McCain's.