Politics

Politics

There are 1,056 posts filed in Politics (this is page 53 of 106).

Profile slamming

I was thinking that there isn’t much out there that describes what I believe Mitt Romney’s campaign (or one of its allies) is doing to surreptitiously set Facebook accounts to like the campaign’s page. Is it account hijacking? Hacking? Vandalism? What do you call it?

Then I recalled telephone slamming, the practice where unscrupulous telephone companies steals the customer of another telephone company by switching that customer’s long distance provider without their knowledge or consent. This happened to a company I once worked for and stunned me in its audacity.

I think that manipulating someone’s social media profile without their permission is similar in some ways to telephone slamming. Since no one else seems to have come up with a name for this practice, I will call it “profile slamming.”

Barracuda Labs looks at Romney’s Twitter numbers

From Barracuda Labs


Barracuda Labs, the highly-respected spam-filtering company, wrote up a superb analysis of Mitt Romney’s Twitter numbers. You should read the whole thing, but here are some highlights:

Most interestingly, during our investigation, Republican nominee for US President Mitt Romney has been scrutinized recently for his abnormal increase in new followers (@mittromney), indicating that these followers had been purchased in the same way as the Dealers/Abuser scenario from our study. We do note that these followers could have been purchased by either himself, his associates or by his opponents. Particularly, on July 21st, 2012, his follower number went from 673,002 to 789,924, representing a gain of 116,922 or 17%.

In one day – boom! – his follower numbers grow an astounding 17 percent!
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More stories of Romney fudging social media

FastCompany recently warned against the temptation of buying fake Twitter followers, pointing to a service called StatusPeople which can ferret out fakes. Says the article:

Do a quick Google search for “Mitt Romney Twitter Followers” and you’ll find dozens of articles discussing how his follower numbers grew suspiciously. Security firm Barracuda Labs created an infographic based on its research breaking down Romney’s newfound Twitter fame, sharing that one in four of Romney’s new Twitter accounts had never sent a single tweet. No matter how the presidential candidate got these new followers, it doesn’t look good from the outside (although his Faker Score is currently sitting pretty at just 12% of 839,719 followers).

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Did Mitt Romney hack my Facebook account?

Romney Facebook likes (courtesy Centrist Word)

After a 20-year IT career spent keeping the digital bad guys out of the corporate networks I managed, I’ve developed a sharp sense of when something digital isn’t right. Readers of my blog have seen me put this ability to use against phone scam artists, hapless former Nigerian kings, phishers, and other digital vermin.

When I spot something unusual, I am driven to find out as much about it as I can. I enjoy the challenge of uncovering online crooks, exercising my online sleuthing skills to get answers. Something big and unusual caught my attention last week; something no one else seems yet to be talking about.

I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t care if I’m the only one to see that the emperor has no clothes. If I am truly convinced that everyone else is missing the truth, I must, must be bold enough to say so. I can’t ignore it. It’s just part of my personality.

With that in mind, let me state this clearly and concisely: Mitt Romney is manipulating his social media numbers. How do I know this? Because Romney’s campaign picked the wrong guy to manipulate.
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Centrist Word: Mitt Romney Campaign Busted Buying Hundreds of Thousands of Facebook LIKES and Twitter Followers

Romney Facebook likes (courtesy Centrist Word)


The Centrist Word blog has uncovered evidence of social media manipulation by the Mitt Romney campaign.

While the blog accuses the campaign of buying Facebook followers, the article doesn’t provide answers about how this manipulation is being done. It’s quite possible that Romney’s campaign or someone acting on its behalf has been exploiting a Facebook vulnerability to secretly register likes on the accounts of not just fake users but real users as well.

The same thing happened at the same time. As you can see in the chart above, Mitt had seen a steady rise in the number of Facebook likes, then, magically on August 1st a spike. At the same time, Romney set the lofty goal of reaching 3 million Facebook likes. Propaganda for the digital age – purchased popularity.

Again, all you need to do is google “buy facebook followers” and you will see dozens of companies ready to help. In most cases, these services are used by companies in order to give them an initial ‘boost’ when first setting up a Facebook fan page for their business.

via Mitt Romney Campaign Busted Buying Hundreds of Thousands of Facebook LIKES and Twitter Followers |.

More Mitt Romney Facebook hijacks

A few other Facebook users are reporting that their accounts were used to like Mitt Romney’s page without their permission.

One person replied to my post to the Facebook help forum with this comment:

“The same thing happened to me and a few other people I know.”

Then there is this comment:
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Email to Facebook

I posted this in Facebook’s Help forum tonight. I don’t know if it will do any good but I thought I’d use Facebook’s meager feedback channels to at least attempt to alert them to this.

It seems that sometime today I unknowingly became a “fan” of the Mitt Romney page. I never clicked like on Romney’s page, nor does my Facebook activity log show any likes for Romney’s page for at least as far back as October 14, 2011.

I strongly suspect that someone has manipulated Facebook’s database to set this like status without Facebook properly logging it as it would’ve with any other likes I have chosen. Please research this and tell me when I became a fan of Mitt Romney’s page and, if you CAN’T tell me when I became a fan, please explain WHY you can’t tell.

I suspect a hack or virus is to blame. Or a breach of Facebook security.

Thanks much!

Mark Turner
Sysadmin and network security geek
Raleigh

Facebook virus forces me to “like” Mitt Romney

An unlike but no like? Something’s going on here!

Update 10 Oct 2012: Hello Mother Jones readers. Check here for my response to Erika Eichelberger’s story.

I checked Facebook this evening to find status updates from Mitt Romney’s campaign in my Facebook news feed. Thinking this was one of those stupid “promoted” updates that you see on Twitter, I gave it no mind. That is, until I found yet another update from the Romney campaign in my news feed. It was then that I surfed over to the Mitt Romney Facebook page and discovered to my shock that I was listed as “liking” that page.

Umm, no. Obama has raised my ire more than once, of course, but there is no way I’m voting for that clueless millionaire buffoon I call “Rmoney.” How Facebook came to think I would like the Romney page is quite the mystery.

A fellow geek suggested (I assume half-jokingly) that a Romney virus might be responsible for the status change. While I laughed at the suggestion, now I’m wondering if there might be truth to it. I have seen updates saying some friend of mine liked Mitt Romney, only to be surprised that person would do so knowing what I know of them. Not everyone wears their politics on their sleeve the way I do, but when you see multiple instances of this kid of thing you do begin to wonder if these choices aren’t being made without the knowledge of the account holders.
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A lesson in democracy, CAC style

With my vacation out of the way (though not the blogging of the vacation, yet), I’m now realizing the things that I’ve been meaning to blog but haven’t gotten to yet. One is a very exciting opportunity in mid-November to provide a lesson in democracy to some visiting students from Charlotte.

A few weeks ago, Charlene Willard with the city’s Community Services department put me in touch with teacher Katy Field, Ninth Grade Class Dean of Providence Day School in Charlotte. Katy told me she was considering bringing her 9th grade class to Raleigh for a few days so that they could see how our democratic process works. Charlene told Katy about all the ways citizens can get involved through Raleigh’s unique Citizens Advisory Councils and Katy became determined to make CACs a big part of her program.
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Pussy Riot case shows Russia’s dark path

Last week, Russian authorities handed down a harsh sentance to the three members of the female punk band Pussy Riot, after the band staged an anti-Putin “punk prayer” in a Russian Orthodox Church. It shows the increasingly autocratic ways of Russian prime minister Vladmir Putin, who is apparently leading the country away from its experiments as an open society (while lining his own pockets at the same time).

Below is a statement from one of the band members which was posted to one of the band’s support groups on Facebook. She is absolutely correct when she writes that the country’s heavy-handed response to their stunt shows the Russian leadership’s fear of opposition.

I hope their case will wake other Russians to Putin’s looting of their country and their rights.
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