Republicans & Black Hat SMS (Love it!!!)

It looks like my fellow Republicans have engaged in some blackhat methods to help educate Virginia voters.

We all know that SMS text messages are still not a mainstream source of marketing but it looks like this group found a legal loophole by mailing to the email address associated with each phone number instead of actually sending a text (which is illegal for campaigns if permission has not been given).

My guess is that the rule will be re-written and not allow any mass email that is not previously authorized. I hope it doesn't come to that.

Has anyone here used blackhat methods to help a candidate with an election? If so, did it help?


PS - Politics are not allowed on BHW. Even though I would love to have a long thread talking about how the next four years can be better, it is best if we stick to the blackhat side of things to prevent issues. :-|

Actually I just read the rules and it had nothing about politcs not being allowed,but you can hate on someone cause of their political views.

they were doing some like-jacking on facebook too. i thought it was pretty funny.

Why is this categorized as black hat?
The legal loophole suggests legality. SE terms are not involved. What is nefarious about this?

Disclaimer: I lean towards Republicans and acknowledge that I may be ethically challenged.

I signed up to some pro-gun websites, and now I get a ton of emails from Romney, Ryan, and Bachmann. Bleh.

psikogeek said:

Why is this categorized as black hat?
The legal loophole suggests legality. SE terms are not involved. What is nefarious about this?

Disclaimer: I lean towards Republicans and acknowledge that I may be ethically challenged.

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What do you think black hat is? Black hat does not always imply "illegal". For most of us, its finding loopholes and using it to our advantage.

Again, the law says that you cannot text. But if you text with the email extension, it still appears as a text on the phone even though it is actually an email.

Roparadise said:

Actually I just read the rules and it had nothing about politcs not being allowed,but you can hate on someone cause of their political views.

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Give that a shot, and let me know how far you get.

s0ap said:

Give that a shot, and let me know how far you get.

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I forgot about the Broad TOS clause that BHW has early on in the first part of the rules. Why do almost all websites have those broad clauses that can get a person banned for almost anything?

So we can ban people that split hairs and try to dance around the rules.

Roparadise said:

I forgot about the Broad TOS

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In Soviet Russia, the broad tos forgets about you