Internet Security and Programming

While political polls may show Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain locked in a close race for the White House, junk e-mail purveyors have a clear favorite. According to research by Secure Computing, spammers are seven times as likely to invoke Obama’s name in a subject line in a bid to trick people into opening the missives. The company found that spam touting either candidate peaked around the middle of the Republican National Convention. Still, for the month of September, political-themed junk e-mail favored Obama 84 percent of the time, while spam campaigns mentioning McCain made up just 12 percent of the total, Secure Computing said. The vice presidential race, on the other hand, appears to be far more competitive - at least from the spammer’s perspective. Secure Computing found that about 1.9 percent of fake political spam last month named Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in the headline, [...]

Read more…