BitDefender Captures Election Spam

BUCHAREST, Romania -- BitDefender®, an award-winning provider of antivirus software and data security solutions, today found that a large wave of unsolicited e-mails exhorting the qualities of Ron Paul as a candidate for the U.S. presidency are being captured by BitDefender spam filters.

The spam e-mails originate from many different computers, with a wide geographical distribution, making BitDefender specialists suspect that the spammer is using a “bot” network for his "run.”

The e-mails appear to have false “To:” fields – a hallmark of spam – making it highly unlikely that this is part of a legitimate campaign.

"We haven't observed any previous cases of using spam to try and influence a presidential campaign, in the USA or elsewhere,” declared Vlad Valceanu, head of BitDefender’s antispam unit. “It remains to be seen what impact (if any) this incident has on the outcome of the election, but it's certainly a worrying incident, as people of other political inclinations may feel compelled to counter with some spam of their own.”

BitDefender