Just a quick chuckle from Byron Acohido at USAT.
Spammasters, ever searching for new tickles to entice people to click on links in emails, are using interest in the the GOP primary and its contenders in their most recent canned meat product efforts.
Romney turned up in 45% of the politically themed spam messages intercepted by security firm BitDefender in January. One example purports to come from CNN with news about former Utah governor Jon Huntsman's decision to drop out of the presidential race and endorse Romney.
But it's followed by a pitch to click to a website, freecreditscore.com, to use services from Experian, one of the Big Three credit bureaus, says Catalin Cosoi, senior researcher at BitDefender.
Gingrich showed up in 33% of political news spam, including a series of messages pitching a device designed to save energy, which plugs into a household electricity socket. And Ron Paul's name is turning up in spam messages comprised of snippets of political discussions cut-and-pasted from online bulletin boards.
Now, myself, I don't know why anyone would even open an email purporting to be a CNN story about Jon Huntsman, but I suppose somebody must, just as there have got to be idiots in the Great Age of Malware who'd click on a link in an email from a stranger.
The story gave me some ideas for some badass targeted marketing. Using Mitt interest to plug freecreditscore's pretty clever, though I'm thinking Ameriprise and Charles Schwab might get more clicks from such pitches. Maybe National Bank of the Caymans?
Newt followers are natural marks for male enhancement products. Ron Paul? Why, GOLD, of course. Santorum? Well, who knows? I imagine there may be some hot, man-on-dog video sites out there somewhere.
Still, with the nature of this primary season, there is one site that could really get a bump from fake news spams about the GOP: Clowns of America.