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So I'm seeing that a bunch of right-wingers (starting with Dinesh D'Souza, a man convicted of campaign fraud) are saying that the Kpop stans are "foreign interference" for ... trolling Trump's campaign rally.
this is the equivalent of accusing a tornado that cancels a campaign rally of interference. It's not illegal to give a campaign false information about yourself. It's not illegal to reserve a ticket and then not go. And it's not illegal to protest or ~interfere~ with an event.
It's also not illegal to take advantage of INCREDIBLY SHITTY web security to prank a system designed for data collection and to fill it with bad data.
I legit just tested it out, because the link to register for the Tulsa event is still active!
I put in a Google Voice number, which worked to spoof the confirmation code, and was able to use an obviously fake email to register.
I put in a Google Voice number, which worked to spoof the confirmation code, and was able to use an obviously fake email to register.
At the very least, your registration system should be screening for known email spoof public inbox addresses, like http://mailinator.com . A confirmation text is easy to get around when Google Voice exists, like so.
Not requiring an address, either, just zip code and state, makes it incredibly easy to fake. I just typed in random numbers, figured out which state they belonged to, and put that.
It also, judging by the test I just ran, doesn't do basic cross checking to ensure a valid zip code is in the state cited. I just changed my zip code to 90210 and my state to Alaska, and it did nothing. I extended the zip code to ten nonsense digits, and ... nothing.
I just registered four times with the same phone number and email address, and it let me through every time.
The only time it threw an error was when I made the zip code too long. That was IT.
The only time it threw an error was when I made the zip code too long. That was IT.
What I'm saying here is that the Trump campaign didn't take the basic fucking steps to ensure they get clean data out of this. Now they have nearly a million (probably more at this point) random accounts, including four named after the rock band Butthole Surfers.
So when KPOP fans - who in this case are actually a ton of American teens! - took advantage of those security flaws to register multiple times for an event and then not show up?
They didn't do anything illegal. They just demonstrated that the Emperor has no audience.
They didn't do anything illegal. They just demonstrated that the Emperor has no audience.
To be absolutely clear: it's not illegal to "interfere with" or troll a campaign event. People are allowed to sign up and not show up. It's not foreign interference because a campaign rally isn't protected election activity, and the actors here ARE NOT FOREIGN. They're teens.
That said!! This is a big troll than I think many people realize. Like, lol, only 6200 out of a MILLION registrants actually showed up. But wait, there's more!
The Trump campaign database has now been corrupted with literally over a million sets of bad data.
The Trump campaign database has now been corrupted with literally over a million sets of bad data.
*bigger troll, I mean.
Campaigns depend on clean data. Being able to connect event attendance to a voter file means you might be able to get that person to volunteer, and you'll be able to collect data that allows you to follow up to make sure they're actually voting.
Campaigns depend on clean data. Being able to connect event attendance to a voter file means you might be able to get that person to volunteer, and you'll be able to collect data that allows you to follow up to make sure they're actually voting.
Bad data means you will waste TONS of energy chasing a vote that doesn't exist. Say a vol puts down that a voter is undecided when they're really strong for the other guy. You will now waste your time on that voter, which means you don't have time for ACTUAL swing votes.
And that's when you're STARTING from clean data. Right now, the Trump campaign has literally a million random email addresses and faked phone numbers attached to zero voter records.
But you can't just mass-delete that. You have to actually go through and sort out who attended and who didn't, based on scans at the arena, and then try and figure out who's real or fake from there.
And cleaning data is way harder than just inputting it. You have to have a person look at the actual data.
Congrats, you just cost yourself literally THOUSANDS in man hours trying to clean up that million-strong registrant data you were crowing about.
Congrats, you just cost yourself literally THOUSANDS in man hours trying to clean up that million-strong registrant data you were crowing about.
This isn't to say the Biden campaign is doing that much better, to be clear. It did force me to enter a real zip code, but still allowed a fake email, and my google voice number
And it looks like the events may be capped - but the difference with these is that the events on Biden's site are listed by and controlled by local field organizers, not the full campaign itself. This isn't going into the FULL campaign database like Trump's.
So what we learned from this is: don't fuck with KPOP stans.
