Paris Hilton For Veep? Press Delete!

August 22, 2008

"Barack Obama has chosen Paris Hilton as his vice-presidential running mate.”

That’s just one choice of pranksters who have been sending fake text messages pinging into jittery American inboxes.

As soon as the democratic presidential candidate declared earlier this month that he would be announcing his VP pick by text message, the jokers saw their chance.

The political blog Wonkette posted details of how to send a legitimate-looking text message to Verizon Wireless customers. The post was headlined “Freak Out Your Friends With Fake Obama VP TXT".

The CrunchGear blog suggested people scare/thrill Hillary Clinton supporters with a text saying Obama had chosen her or add their favorite superhero or fictional character. The Fonz was one suggestion. Other fake texts have announced Al Gore or Olympian Michael Phelps.

The real texts are due to land sometime in the next two days before the Democratic convention opens on Monday.

In the most high-profile use yet of mass text-messaging in the American election campaigns, the Obama camp sent out thousands of messages to registered supporters alerting them to the e-tactic

Those that sent “vp” as a text message to 62262 got the response: "Welcome to Obama Mobile. You will now be one of the 1st notified when the VP candidate is selected."

For those already signed-up for mobile alerts, they received a message: “Barack will announce his VP candidate choice through txt msg between now & the Conv. Tell everyone..."

Andrew LaVallee, on the WSYJ’s Washington Wire blog, said the savviest pranksters are putting the 62262 code in the “From” and “Reply To” lines, and borrowing from his message style - “Dear supporter, today our campaign joins in a historic partnership with Al Gore. Together we will move America forward. Yes we can” - to make their messages look like the real thing.

The number of the phone sending the message does show up in the text so it is easy enough to spot the fakes.

Nick Shapiro, an Obama campaign spokesman, said: “There is incredible enthusiasm for Senator Obama’s vice presidential announcement and unfortunately some people have used that enthusiasm and sent out hoaxes.

“We can assure supporters these texts are not coming from the campaign and their data is secure.”

Andrew LaVallee reported: “For Obama supporters (and plenty of journalists signed up to be notified), it’s made a jittery group even more on edge.”