And if you think that democracy is in the balance, then I'm sorry, but man up a little. You'll get some spam.
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Replying to @Pinboard @SteveBellovin
See
@ErrataRob: They specifically do this. I don’t bother spam-trapping my political donations but others do, and I’m going to start... So how about the campaigns man up a little and stop squeezing a single extra buck by selling our contact info?2 replies 0 retweets 1 like -
Because your assumption that they're selling it is a false assumption. Like I said upthread, people are mining public filings. Consultants are harvesting lists.
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In my case, I give fake physical address information, phone number, and name along with my $5 donation, so the only way the email address can be know is if it's sold. Email addresses aren't part of public filings.
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You are tweeting about breaking the law :-)
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And you now have to acknowledge that your hypothesis is false: Campaigns do indeed sell your email address (and even in the “mine public files” argument, that doesn’t contain the email address). The lack of respect is a big problem.
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Connecting public filings to email addresses is an extremely lucrative line of work because you can sell this information to... every campaign in the country, as you've noticed.
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That DOES NOT WORK when you are dealing with campaign-specific spam-trapped emails. Rob does that: the campaigns themselves are selling the data.
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You're still making assumptions there, though. Some campaigns sell the data, some rent the mailing lists, some have media consultants who copy the lists, some have employees/volunteers who copy the list, some share it with the state party or DCCC, and who knows what ActBlue does
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You are right about that, but this is often visible in the data. Almost always, the emails are marked by who sent them on behalf of whom, such as "This email sent by Romney 2012" to my "Rubio 2016" email address. ActBlue has dramatically changed the rules, though.
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I'm super curious in tracing how this stuff gets disseminated. I get salty at accusations that "a campaign sold my data!" because I've worked with campaigns that acted entirely ethically, and the lists still somehow got out. I want to understand that better.
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Does it matter? The signal is clear: 1-off email X to campaign -> spam to that address. Who really cares whether it is the campaign or a rogue insider. It is a serious problem because it shows a serious lack of respect for the donors.
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It matters a lot whether it's ActBlue vs. a fifth-grade math teacher in Boone, Iowa running for state house.
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