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The coming wave of “election spam”: what’s in store, and what’s the danger?

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Social web security company Impermium has run the numbers for a nifty infographic on the budding explosion in nefarious web traffic tied to the 2012 election. To Impermium, this largely means fake comments, fake blog posts, and spam emails meant to influence the political process. Spambots are engaging in giant surges of hateful comments about particular candidates, for example, then disappearing. Looking at where the spam comes from showed it’s being propagated in part by the same people who spam you for everything else.