A study by online security company Secure Computing indicates that spam referring to Barack Obama outstrips that referencing John McCain 6 - 1, while Palin spam easily beats Biden spam 7 - 2.
Meanwhile, news stories that cite McCain outstrip Obama 10 - 9, while websites referencing Obama best McCain 3 - 2. Palin new stories and mentions on web sites are pretty consistent with her spam ration, 7 - 2.
Secure Computing determined the ratios by counting the instances that names were referenced in spam.
According to PC Magazine, the report indicated that:
"Though the spam message content itself is nonsensical, the basic themes of the Obama email content does tend to revolve around the shallow factors that are espoused in the mainstream media as central campaign issues: race, disputes with Clinton, messianic oratory, and FOX news smears. The McCain spam subjects are equally driven by shallow media propaganda, revolving around age and wealth."
A sampling of the spammers' subject lines, as noted by The Globe and Mail:
Naturally, these spam emails have nothing to do with the actual campaign, but instead are playing off "popular subjects" to try to get people to open the email. And it's amazing that here are still a percentage of people who will open unsolicited email. It's one thing when you receive an email from an organization whose newsletter you opted-in to, but why open anything else?
