Many bloggers are saying they are getting bombed with right-wing German spam today. I am one of them.
My Gmail account is being swamped by hundreds of German spam mails today – literally hundreds of them, un-filtered in my inbox. Usually, Google is good at filtering out spam, but not this time. The mails cover different topics in German and English, linking to public (mostly non-spam, “regular”) articles. Implicitly, they all express right-wing views. Some more, some less radical. I suspect I’m by far not the only one getting these mails.
The press, so far, has been fairly quiet on this issue. eWeek, however, is reporting that there is a spam attack underway, but does not dig into the potential blog aspects of it.
What’s going on here? While I can’t be sure, my hunch is that certain German political groups may be targeting bloggers to get us to spread their message. I haven’t seen spam pickup in any my other mail accounts – some of which are very public. So, again, early signs point to an attack on bloggers. Anyone have more info?
Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.
He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.
