Dean Campaign Admits to Spam, Severes Relationship with provider

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News.com reports that the Dean campaign acknowledge it had spammed people on the Internet. Infrequent readers can find my stories on the subject here, here, here and there. What I find most interesting is that the news has been making the rounds in the blogosphere for a couple of weeks by now. My first entry is dated August 5th and the spamvertized article is about a week old. Once more, it seems that blogs are trumping regular news organizations when it comes to bringing breaking news to the public.

Also of interest is the story itself. The Dean campaign is quoted saying

On Tuesday, August 12th, Dean for America received notification from a supporter that spam was being sent. We terminated our relationship with both vendors immediately.

What I find most interesting here is that I received the piece of spam on the 5th of August, emailed it to the Dean’s blog then (figuring I would get a response quickly). With no response on the initial email, I emailed them a link to my blog entry asking for comment and am still waiting for an answer.

The article continues with

The Dean campaign’s bulk e-mail, which was sent last week,

The article is dated August 18, which means that last week would have been, at the earliest, August 11. Are we talking about separate pieces of spam here?

The last piece of the article I have a beef with is the following:

The Dean campaign did not immediately respond to questions about which e-mail contractors it hired, what kind of “opt-in” lists the contractors promised or how many persons’ in-boxes were affected.

Just looking at both the spamvertized article and my own entry on the subject, the reporter could have had that information in the story, even if the Dean campaign did not provide the info.

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