Alert! - Misleading Web addresses lead to anti-Obama site (GOP Attack!)

[Breeze54]

Misleading Web addresses lead to anti-Obama site

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-trailobama30-2008aug30,0,3398842.story

Obama-Biden.org and Obama-Biden.com divert people to the website of the American Issues
Project, the group behind TV ads decrying the Democratic nominee's link to a onetime radical.


August 30, 2008

Casual Web surfers who click on Obama-Biden.org or Obama-Biden.com might assume
they'd find information about the Democratic presidential ticket.

They'd be wrong.

Both addresses divert people to a website that is harshly anti-Obama, the website
of the American Issues Project.

That's the newly formed nonprofit group that flooded cable television in the battleground
states of Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania with ads decrying the relationship between
Barack Obama and William Ayers, a founder of the radical Weather Underground who is
now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

It wasn't clear who is behind the trick. Christian Pinkston, spokesman for the
American Issues Project, said his group had nothing to do with it.

Loyola Law School professor Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert, said he came across the
"political cyber-squatting" while exploring Internet domain names linked to Obama and Biden.
"I wanted to see if the campaign was quick enough to snatch up the domain names," Hasen said.

As for websites including the names of John McCain and Sarah Palin, the McCain campaign seems
to have snapped them up, possibly to protect the Republican candidates against a similar ploy.

But the Democrats aren't the only victims of cyber-tricks.

McCain-Romney.com doesn't bring you information about McCain and Mitt Romney, who had been under
consideration as a running mate. Instead, it leads to the "official home of the Hundred Year War
. . . and Bush's Third Term!"

Then there is McCain Pawlenty.com, a domain using the name of another also-ran vice presidential
choice, Tim Pawlenty, governor of Minnesota. A visit there finds a for-sale sign:

"Lightly used Internet domain name in like-new condition.

"Used only by senior citizen with dial-up modem."

--

Dan Morain

[matt819]

1. McCain-Palin.com

mccain-palin.com and related addresses were created on 1/29/08.

[Breeze54]

2. So?

I don't care about them.