Is anyone else getting quasi-spammed by, I assume, the DNC?

July 7, 2009 2:00 AM

Has anyone else who gave to the Obama campaign or whose email address is otherwise in the possession of the DNC recently had themselves added to mailing lists for local Democrat congressional candidates?

So far I've gotten like 4 or 5 confirmation requests from the mailing list of a Democratic congressional candidate in my district stating that they have "received a request to subscribe (my email) to our announcement list", which means my email address has probably been submitted to them that many times. Now, unless someone I know is trying to pull a prank on me, in which case I would think they would subscribe me to some bible-beater candidate's list or NAMBLA or something and not a congressional candidate I'll probably vote for anyway, I have to assume that the DNC is auto-subscribing people to candidates' lists based on their addresses. Now, I don't mind being on Obama's list or getting stuff in the mail asking me to contribute to the DNC, but this sort of thing kind of strikes me as... not cool. I mean, it's just a minor transgression of Internet etiquette all things considered, but nonetheless it kind of smells like spam.

So, I can't be the only one getting this stuff. Is this a widespread phenomenon, or are they only doing it for this particular candidate or some candidates?

posted by DecemberBoy to Computers & Internet (24 answers total)

Response by poster: Again, it's not a big deal, but I think the proper thing to do here, and it would have even required less effort, would have been to send a single email to everyone on the list in a certain district saying "hey, this person is running for Congress, here's their website and they have a mailing list you can subscribe to if you so choose", not auto-subscribing me to the list 5 times.
posted by DecemberBoy at 2:08 AM on July 7, 2009

The DNC has been spamming me since 2004, despite the fact that I've unsubscribed from any number of various email lists I've ended up on after joining just one during that election season. I'm not saying it's why I'm registered independent now...but it didn't help.
posted by Roman Graves at 2:38 AM on July 7, 2009

It's not just the Obama campaign. I gave to a specific congressional campaign - my only donation to the Dems - and have been getting spammed ever since from other candidates. Drives me nuts.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 2:58 AM on July 7, 2009

It may be a low-level campaign office doofus doing the subscribing.

Get the candidate on the phone and give him an earful about electronic privacy. If you do it well enough he will take it up as a campaign issue.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 3:50 AM on July 7, 2009

The unique email address I used when signing a petition on the Dean for America website a zillion years ago was passed along to NJDems.org, DeanforTexas.org (?), Frank Pallone, and NJforEdwards (a list titled ElizabethEdwards). There may have been others but I only did a cursory scan of my email archive.

I was never able to successfully unsubscribe from any of the lists although all of them petered out in 2005 anyway. All of them had broken unsubscribe links (or none) and/or unsubscribe buttons on their respective sites that didn't function.

The really annoying part was that when I signed the petition, I opted out of receiving any email since I wasn't even all that interested in Dean in the first place!
posted by bcwinters at 3:57 AM on July 7, 2009

I didn't contribute to Obama and I get tons of DNC spam. I'm solidly in the demographic, I imagine it was culled from any number of places.
posted by cj_ at 4:22 AM on July 7, 2009

Gave to Obama, deliberately signed up for my local congressional spam, but the only spam I get are the endless Obama ones. I don't even get fundraising stuff from the congresscritters, just their newsletters.

Anyway, the laws on opt-out are pretty difficult for the consumer (I'm a professional fundraiser). Fundraisers don't need to offer the opt-out option in initial mailings; they only need to do it in subsequent ones (like once you get that unsolicited email, there should be an opt-out in there. If there isn't they are in violation). However, by this time they've passed your name on to others, who have passed it on to others, in secula seculorum. Further, as someone said upthread, you may just be in a demographic. You live, shop, subscribe, and spend along a certain pattern which has flagged you as a "likely" somewhere. Somebody just went to a list service with a profile, and tag you're it.

If it really bothers you, you need to go to the opt-out from every single one of these emails until they peter off. Tedious, I know. They will eventually peter off. The opt-out law has very little teeth, but it is the law, and reputable places will honor it. Eventually.

Just count your blessings. This stuff used to come hard copy in the mailbox. Email spam? meh.
posted by nax at 5:12 AM on July 7, 2009

I did contribute, but since I don't have local congressional candidates I get no spam.
posted by Pollomacho at 5:39 AM on July 7, 2009

I gave, but then unsubscribed after the election due to the endless emails from the Obama camp. Now I thankfully get nothing.
posted by murrey at 5:42 AM on July 7, 2009

Your contribution is a matter of public record. They have to turn your name over to the FEC which lists it in a publically accessible database. If you google yourself, its likely to come up next to all of the 10k race times and other junk associated with it.
posted by Ironmouth at 6:10 AM on July 7, 2009

When you last registered to vote did you include your email address if your state has that option? I know that mailing lists are created off Board of Elections lists and you just might have fit into a campaign's universe.
posted by munchingzombie at 6:15 AM on July 7, 2009

Gave to Obama as Senator and Pres Candidate. I write to my govt reps. I just get the emails from the Obama campaign and a Christmas card. Nothing else.
posted by jeanmari at 6:30 AM on July 7, 2009

I contributed to Obama, and I opted in for e-mails, but I haven't received mail or e-mail from anyone else. Is your location still Austin as listed on your profile? Because I contributed to Obama while living in Austin, even. What is your congressional district? I did a brief internship at the DCCC, and generally they're not going to exert a ton of effort on pestering people unless there's a contentious seat that Democrats have a chance of winning. There's three congressional districts that cover most of Austin, and those are Lloyd Doggett's, Michael McCaul's, and Lamar Smith's. Lloyd Doggett isn't in any danger of losing his seat, so the DCCC isn't going to sign you up for e-mails about him. Michael McCaul and Lamar Smith are both Republican, and while it would be nice if they lost their seats, they're both secure enough that I can't see the DCCC throwing any effort into those races. I might be out of the loop or there might be something new for the upcoming election, granted.

Also: not an election year. They're unlikely to do that sort of thing right now, when there's hardly anything going on. I also just don't think they'd do something like that in general, because national level people tend to be more careful about pissing people off.

All that makes me think it's not the DNC giving your information to the DCCC.

I will say this, as someone who worked in Texas politics for a bit: while individual candidates vary on whether or not they'll give out your information, if you give anything to the state party or any local PACs or sign up for any state Democrat-related mailing lists, your info is almost assuredly gonna get moved around. While the national party does not generally hold out a lot of hope for gains in Texas, Texas Democrats fight tooth and nail to make the gains they do. Hell, have you ever posted to a Texas Democrat blog or something with your e-mail address visible?

I'd bet money it's some local folks, and not related to Obama.
posted by Nattie at 6:31 AM on July 7, 2009

Another data point here, I donated several times, always using a special email address on my domain (obama@[domain].com). I'm still getting Obama emails (I set up a filter to put a special label on them, mark them as read, and archive them during the election), but I've never received any emails to that address from anyone else.
posted by burnmp3s at 6:43 AM on July 7, 2009

I still get emails from John Kerry.
posted by elsietheeel at 7:49 AM on July 7, 2009

It's probably like the old Breck commercials. Obama camp tells two people, and they tell two people, etc. And thus your e-mail address makes the rounds in all Dem circles.

I used to get a ton of spam from the Obama camp, but unsubscribed it stopped completely. But by that time I also had to unsubscribe from my State Dem's list as well. (The State Dems are probably the most annoying of all)
posted by momzilla at 8:07 AM on July 7, 2009

If there is a question here, I'm having a hard time finding it.

it's in the first sentence. The one with the question mark on the end.

I get stuff from Barbara Boxer here in CA that i never asked for. Not sure if it's via Obama or other lefty organizations that have my email. I'm pretty sure the ACLU isn't selling/giving away my info, that would just be too ironic, but I'm sure others are.
posted by drjimmy11 at 8:53 AM on July 7, 2009

Best answer: YES.

I signed up for Texans for Obama, got tons of e-mail. I also was constantly being harrassed by that David Plouffe or whomever. I unsubscribed to both.

Lately I've been getting all these e-mails from these other random Congresspersons. The past few days I've been getting three or four e-mails a day from Lainey F**ing Melnick for Congress, telling me that they "just received a request to subscribe [old e-mail address] to their announcement list" by "someone at this ip address [none listed]" "via this url [none listed]." They want me to click to verify that I want to subscribe, and if I don't want to subscribe, do nothing. Well I've done nothing and I'm being bombarded.
posted by thebazilist at 9:31 AM on July 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

Another data point:

nax's experience ("Gave to Obama, deliberately signed up for my local congressional spam, but the only spam I get are the endless Obama ones.") has been mine exactly.

I think nax and Nattie have hit the nail on the head, here.
posted by pineapple at 9:43 AM on July 7, 2009

Best answer: YES, ME TOO! Lainey Melnick, right? I know many others who have gotten this, and one suggested reporting spam (I have Gmail). That's what I did.
posted by ishotjr at 4:24 PM on July 7, 2009

Same experience as burnmp3s. My Obama address has never recieved anything except email from his team and from people who have that address because I signed up for their events.
posted by Lesser Shrew at 8:30 PM on July 7, 2009

Response by poster: Lately I've been getting all these e-mails from these other random Congresspersons. The past few days I've been getting three or four e-mails a day from Lainey F**ing Melnick for Congress, telling me that they "just received a request to subscribe [old e-mail address] to their announcement list" by "someone at this ip address [none listed]" "via this url [none listed]."

Yes, that's the one! Lainey Melnick. OK, so it's not just me, but it seems that it's just this particular candidate that is into spamming people in this way. I seem to have stopped getting them now, but I've gotten like 10 of them.
posted by DecemberBoy at 2:03 AM on July 8, 2009

Response by poster: When I asked, I assumed that it probably wasn't just the one candidate, and some script and/or helper monkeys at the national Democratic party had been tasked with adding emails correlated with addresses to Democratic candidates' mailing lists. But since it does only seem to be Lainey Melnick, I'm guessing that her campaign got a list of emails from a higher source, and someone wrote a crappy script to add them all to her mailing list. Maybe this script doesn't stop until it sees that you've confirmed the "you have been added" message and sees your address in the list database, and that's why it keeps sending them, or maybe it just sucks and doesn't work. On all the ones I got, I noticed the IP address and referring URL were blank, which suggests they're being added from the server's local network or from the server itself. I was literally getting one every half hour before I asked, but they seemed to have tapered off.
posted by DecemberBoy at 2:17 AM on July 8, 2009

See also.
posted by Pollomacho at 8:09 AM on July 8, 2009