Joe's Random Ramblings

And yet another stupid politician who thinks buying email addresses is a good idea...
These politicians don't even check if the person behind the email address is located in their state.
In this particular case, the spam came from some politician in Massachusetts, whereas I am living in California.
Geez, when will these people learn?

The actual spam (and of course, there are tracking tokens in the URLs posted, as every spammer has...):

If you are having trouble viewing this E-newsletter, please visit
[http://tsongas.congressnewsletter.net/mail/util.cfm?gpiv=[redacted]&gen=1]
for the Web Version.
Congresswoman Niki Tsongas, Serving the Fifth Congressional District of Massachusetts

Dear Friends,

My most important duty in representing our district in Congress is to make sure that
I am always listening to the voices of Fifth District residents. I try to do this
whenever I am out visiting our communities, during my Congress on Your Corner
sessions, through telephone town hall meetings, and by reading your letters and
emails. From time to time, I also send out brief surveys to get your thoughts and
opinions on current issues before Congress. If you have a few minutes to let me
know your thoughts on the subjects below, I would very much appreciate it. Your
responses are kept strictly confidential, and I will publish the results of the
survey on my website next week. Also, these are complex subject matters that don?t
always lend themselves to simple answers, so please feel free to expand on your
responses in the large text boxes below, or to email me [link 1] your thoughts
directly.

Best regards,

[image =
http://tsongas.congressnewsletter.net/images/user_images/Tsongas_Signature.gif]

Niki Tsongas

Survey/Question [survey]

Survey/Question [survey]

----------------------
footnotes
----------------------
[survey]
http://tsongas.congressnewsletter.net/mail/util.cfm?gpiv=[redacted]&gen=1
[link 1] http://www.tsongas.house.gov/?sectionid=11§iontree=3,11

Website Address:
http://tsongas.house.gov/

Office Location:
Washington DC Office
1607 Longworth House Office Building | Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-3411 | Fax: (202) 226-0771
...

And it is not even possible to email that person from outside her district (unless I enter a zip code within her district):
http://tsongas.house.gov/?sectionid=11&sectiontree=3,11

Regrettably, I am unable to reply to any email from constituents outside of my District.

Oh, and two more things:
This spam was sent to my email account at a university in California, so it should be clear to anybody even just looking at the email address that it is outside of Massachusetts.
Second, the name and the email address are obviously unconnected, again as anybody actually looking at the email address could see. It is "some random name" <completely different name at ...>, i.e., what is typically seen only in spam.