Is the White House Sending Spam?
August 17, 2009 -- Concerned citizens and privacy groups have been up in arms of late after hundreds of people have claimed they received unsolicited spam email from the White House.
The mass email written by senior presidential adviser David Axelrod contained a heavily biased message that defended President Obama’s health care proposals and encouraged supporters to help rebut criticism circulating on the Internet.
Opponents of President Obama’s health care plan who received this and other spam messages from the White House have argued that they never signed up to receive email from the White House, and have been outspoken with their concerns regarding their privacy. After a few days of silence in regards to the email list, the White House finally released an official statement to Fox News on Sunday which stated:
“The White House e-mail list is made up of e-mail addresses obtained solely through the White House Web site. The White House doesn’t purchase, upload or merge from any other list, again, all e-mails come from the White House Web site as we have no interest in e-mailing anyone who does not want to receive an e-mail,” the statement said. “If an individual received the e-mail because someone else or a group signed them up or forwarded the e-mail, we hope they were not too inconvenienced.”
Some recipients of the spam have said that they have never even browsed to the official White House Web site. The White House claims that the email may have been sent to such unwilling recipients as a result of on-line petitions from advocacy groups. On-line petitions can contain both the name and email address of the those who sign the petition, and the White House may have added the email addresses from submitted petitions to the White House distribution list.
The White House has stated that it’s Web site managers will seek out and block on-line petitions so that those who wish to receive email from the White House may sign up to do so on an individual basis only.
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