Political Campaigns Mining Online Data To Target Voters

New submitter nicoles writes with this quote from an AP report: "The Romney and Obama campaigns are spending heavily on television ads and other traditional tools to convey their messages. But strategists say the most important breakthrough this year is the campaigns' use of online data to raise money, share information and persuade supporters to vote. The practice, known as 'microtargeting,' has been a staple of product marketing. Now it's facing the greatest test of its political impact in the race for the White House. ... The Romney team spent nearly $1 million on digital consulting in April and Obama at least $300,000. ... Campaigns use microtargeting to identify potential supporters or donors using data gleaned from a range of sources, especially their Internet browsing history. A digital profile of each person is then created, allowing the campaigns to find them online and solicit them for money and support."

Start Scubbing

[spiffydudex]

For those of us who wish to use social networking and other friendly but intrusive aspects of the web...If you haven't already, you better start scrubbing your visible online information. Reduce your online presence.
A good place to start viewing your publicly available information is http://www.pipl.com/ [pipl.com]

From there you can decide whether or not it is acceptable information and take the appropriate measures.

Re:Is your name Ron Paul?

[Anonymous Coward]

So I search for "I will bring them home my first year. You can bank on it" [google.com]. And I find one result from Google. Your post. One result from Google doesn't happen a whole lot. Congratulations on putting that unique sequence of words on the Internet for the first time. You would think for something the president says it would show up somewhere. At least a blog. Ok so without the quotes Google has more results. Yours first, then 'What should you ask in an interview', then 'paying off credit cards' and well nothing that really backs up your quote.

Now I'm not arguing that he didn't promise to end the wars. I'm just saying your quote is nowhere to be found on the Internet so I'm wondering if you have a reference for what you are paraphrasing. On a side note "stick this red hot poker up my ass" [google.com] returns 2090 results. "stick a red hot poker up your ass" [google.com] returns 1420. "stick+this+red+hot+poker+up+your+ass" [google.com] even returns 4.

Re:So...

[rgbrenner]

and you even have your mail viewer set to not download images

the setting is not "do not download images".. it's "do not download external references".

In thunderbird it is "Allow remote content. "
In outlook it is "Block images and other external content in HTML e-mail. "

What programmer would be stupid enough to stop images, but not other remote content? Not only is it a privacy issue, it is also a security issue.

So I have a hard time believing you really understand how email tracking works.