Vote for Whomever You Want - But Don’t Take This Poll!   10/12/2004 - 1,048 views, 2 Comments

Summary: If you get email which encourages you to make a telephone call to express your support for John Kerry or George Bush, don't do it without thinking twice and reading thrice! Spam which suggests that you make just such a call is making the ...

Previous Article « Gaping Security Hole a Pain in the ASP
Read Next Article » 950,000 .info Domains Grabbed and Held by Registrar

If you get email which encourages you to make a telephone call to express your support for John Kerry or George Bush, don’t do it without thinking twice and reading thrice!

Spam which suggests that you make just such a call is making the rounds, but the 900 number provided for you to call does not register with a presidential poll, and instead lines the pockets of those sending the spam from a server somewhere in the Czech Republic, according to British security firm BlackSpider.

Some versions of the mail include such choice tidbits as “The extremely jubilant crowds in Baghdad appeared to vindicate President George Bush’s belief that the military action in Iraq was the right move. … But many questions still remain over the lack of hard evidence of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. With these tough times before us, let us know.” Users are then guilted into making the 900 number call with the admonishment that $1.99 (the charge for the first minute) is a small price to pay for “a better democracy”.

Really, if you want to take part in a poll which makes a difference, go to your local polling place on Tuesday, November 2nd. Not to the telephone to dial a spammed 900 number.

Previous Article « Gaping Security Hole a Pain in the ASP
Read Next Article » 950,000 .info Domains Grabbed and Held by Registrar

Get a FREE summary of the week's articles every Friday!
(You can stop it any time!)
    *We never share your email address with anyone

Email Address:
Date of first visit:
How you found us:

Be sure to watch for the confirmation email!

Subscribe
to The Internet Patrol on your cell phone    Email the link for this page to a friend!

Read more:

»  You Can Still Vote with Paper, But Nobody is Going to Tell You That, and You’ll be Treated Like a Second Class Citizen

»  Online Candidate Calculator Lets You Determine “Who Should I Vote for?” Among the 2008 Presidential Candidates

»  For Many, Blogs Were First Line of Information During the Election

»  Most Hated Spam? Survey Says…”Business Relationship” Spam!

For additional similar stories check out our archives on Everything Else

 

2 Comments »


  1. Comment by Anonymous — 10/12/2004 @ 12:38 am

  2. An email is going around right now, encouraging recipients that they should feel enclined to take a phone poll in their support for either Kerry or Bush. The e-mail states that you will receive $1.99 charge on your phone bill, but “isn’t the price of democracy worth it?” Not hardly. This is a scam. The 900 number that you would call is not registered with any known official presidential poll. So, DO NOT CALL THAT NUMBER!

    found here.

    Comment by bmg://its.bloggingly.delicious — 10/12/2004 @ 1:10 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

Warning! All comments which contain URLs and are clearly just spam to generate a link back to the URL will be deleted on sight. Don't bother wasting your time!

If you are going to include a URL in your comment,
please keep it under 25 characters in length,
or use TinyURL to shorten it before including it in your comment.

Line and paragraph breaks are automatic, your email address is never displayed.
HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)


If you have not posted a comment here before, we apologize for having to ask you to enter the letters and numbers you see in the image above to validate your comment, but we are being attacked by thousands of comment form spams every day! You only need to do this once; once you have successfuly posted a comment here you will not be asked to do this again. Thank you for your understanding!

 
The Internet Patrol
Patrolling the Internet for You!