Michael Gracie

According to Thinkprogress.org, the Minnesota Republican party distributed CDs containing a survey on social issues, and the participants’ results were sent to a remote server for tallying.

Digg called it Sony-like, but it doesn’t sound like a rootkit (link compliments of Techdirt). What it sounds like is taking advantage of gullible computer users. A survey, on a CD, with no EULA or Privacy Policy? Hmmh.

People fill out surveys and online polls so they can see the results of others. It is a curiosity thing. To expect a survey not to gather results, is well, just plain stupid. For those interested, Publicradio.org has a blow by blow of the survey’s contents.

Folks can call this what they want - Sony-like, a privacy invasion, spyware, whatever. I am going to classify the whole thing as “dumbware.”

The Pew Internet & American Life Project did a study on email and spam and came up with some interesting, if not strange conclusions. Fewer Americans mistrusted email as a result of spam, and fewer said they spent less time on email as a result of spam. The Pew study concluded Americans are becoming more tolerant of spam.

Spamroll has a few thoughts on this matter.
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People across the technology landscape have been correct in the assumption that if people never purchaed products from spammers, there would be no economic incentive to spam. It is a solic theory, and I agree.

In what might be good news for the burgeoning mobile spam phenom (if it indeed exists), it seems the potentially hardest core users of mobile services are rejecting spammers advances.
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