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Remember when your email address, when given to a campaign or non-profit, was considered private? Even groups that engage in list swaps with their snail mail lists wouldn’t think of doing the same with their email - the most they might consider is sending an appeal pitching a colleague or ally, but the list remains firmly in their hands.

Unfortunately, one political campaign has gone a step worse than a swap: they’ve put your email address up for grabs by the repo man. According to an article in the politico:

When John McCain’s presidential campaign all but went broke, it borrowed money from its bank using its fundraising list as collateral.

Problem: McCain’s own privacy policy promises donors he won’t sell their information.

That seems to put the Republican senator’s campaign in a pickle; either it pledged to its bank proceeds from something it can’t sell, or it offered to violate its own promise to donors.[h/t: Daily Kos]

The McCain privacy policy is pretty clear here, and it’s not too different from what most organizations have:

We will not sell your personal information. John McCain 2008, will not sell your information to third parties or any commercial entities.

Will this make McCain an accessory to spam? I discuss what value these addresses could have, and why this kind of practice is extremely dangerous, below the fold…

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Editor’s note: as a new feature, we’re doing a weekly survey of Beaconfire staff to get impressions on a variety of non-profit technology issues. All opinions expressed here are solely those of their authors. This week, we asked what people thought was the most influential web 2.0 site of 2007 - here are their answers:

Michael, Principal Consultant: What Web 2.0 category had 15% of Internet users engaged yesterday? What 2.0 revolutionary medium has Seniors, Boomers, GenX-ers, Millenials, Right Wing, Left Wing, Centrists and outright wackos using it? My vote for 2007 Most Influential Web 2.0 Site goes to YouTube.[...]

Tim, Functional Consultant: Facebook for three reasons: It successfully bridged the gap between the rockers and kiddies on MySpace and the fine upstanding professionals on LinkedIn, they had a huge jump in registered users in the past year…and everybody says so, and that’s a huge part of web 2.0.[...]

Mark, Functional Consultant: Flickr is one of the most useful Web 2.0 sites out there. While YouTube may be its more glamorous headline grabbing cousin, Flickr is more useful to more people as the taking and sharing of digital photos is much more pervasive than video.[...]

Milo, Marketing Consultant: Niche social networks: in a world of media fragmentation and long tails, it only makes sense that impersonal behemoths like MySpace and Facebook will lose ground to a smaller, more intimate and focused online communities — like the soon-to-come Shoe Tube — where users can more easily find others who share their passions.[...]

John Brian, Marketing Consultant: Social news sites, and Digg in particular. As I’ve noted previously, social news sites let you pick your own like-minded editor and are becoming a necessary commodity in a McNews world.

Brad, Client Manager: I’d like to suggest the widest influence wasn’t a particular site, but a type of site: the RSS aggregator, which not only makes user-contributed content much easier to manage and access, it also puts the user in editorial control…The power of 2.0 isn’t simply in content generation, but in content distribution.[...]

Kate, Administrative Assistant: I would suggest Facebook, because it’s very accessible to the masses. Also, there’s very little that will be more tangibly influential to the younger generation than their friends telling them when something’s cool.[...]

Eric, Senior Consultant: Yahoo! Groups. In 2007, listservs reached a big milestone: more than half of all Internet users now subscribe to at least one listserv, up from about one in three in 2001. Not only that, email that goes viral has more real world influence that the hot topic du jour at the web 2.0 hype leader du jour. That’s because older adults are much more likely to actually act on their opinions…and older Internet users disproportionately favor email for staying in touch over newfangled web 2.0 alternatives.[...] [for more, read Eric's report on Listserv use for nonprofits (pdf) -ed]

Amy, Functional Consultant: I’d have to 2^nd Kate’s nomination of Facebook - great minds and all of that. It’s most important to me because it’s helped me re-connect with family and friends who I haven’t seen in 10+ years.

Jennifer, Project Manager: The growing popularity of user reviews and ratings on products and services offers great promise for engaging the lowest common denominator…We believe it more when we hear it from our peers. From Netflix to Angie’s List, this Web 2.0 feature has had increasing influence on the American consumer in 2007, and offers great promise in 2008 for influencing consumers of nonprofit resources, services and ideas.[...]

Erika, Operations Manager: I would vote for Facebook as well… One of the things I’ve enjoyed the most about setting up my own page has been being contacted by people I haven’t heard from in a very long time, simply because they found me on Facebook. [...]

There were also submissions for less-heralded, but also important user-generated content sites like KittenWar and StuffOnMyMutt. Some answers were longer than we had room for - read full responses below the fold. And be sure to stop by next week to find out about the browser preferences of the Beaconfire team.

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A few months back, I wrote a post linking to an AP story that suggested that some domain name registrars were using search queries to snatch up domain names that were about to be purchased. It seems that the suspicions discussed in the story were founded.

Earlier this evening, a story on Digg declared that Network Solutions was registering any domain name that was users searched for using their link to the WHOIS database. The comments provided copious examples of this practice, none of which are really appropriate to repeat here. I read the methodology described in the original linked post, and tried to duplicate it myself.

See how it turned out, and why you should be careful, after the jump…

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Elections are taxing. On the candidates, who end up saying goofy stuff, on the voters, who get figuratively buried in direct mail and robocalls, and on the campaign staff, who are so busy working on the campaign up to the election that they often forget that they’ll be unemployed starting the day after. But this year, it could be our email boxes that are strained to the point of breaking.

I’m subscribed to the list of all three major Democratic candidates. Since the new year began, I’ve received no less than 4 messages from Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Barack Obama, and his surrogates have sent me 3 messages. But the king of bacn award goes to the Edwards camp, who sent me 9 messages since the 1^st, including 3 on the 6^th. They also sent me 20 messages in the month of December, compared to 9 for Clinton and 14 for Obama.

Where’s the point of diminishing returns? At what point does one more message break the camel’s back (or at least Gmail’s server)? I explore this question below the fold…

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With the Iowa Caucuses today, I thought it might be good to do a quick roundup of interesting tools that the Presidential Candidates have put together to get out the vote. As happened in 2004, many of these tools will probably trickle into the non-profit sector over the coming year, as we see what works and what doesn’t.

First, I’ve got to say that I love Mitt Romney’s Varitalk. I remember when Snakes on a Plane used this same technology to put together calls from Samuel L. Jackson - my office spent several good hours sending calls to each other. Now you can have robo-Mitt call your friends, address them by name and holiday of choice, and tell them why he’s right for their most important issue, along with a reminder to vote in their own state. It also shows on caller ID as being from a phone number of your choice, and Mitt mentions that it comes from you.

Of course, there’s potential for abuse in applications like this, but that’s going to be true in any voter-generated content application - it’s really no more risky than a simple "Tell a Friend" form. I did find it odd, though, that there was such a limited selection of names Mitt could say. While I’m not surprised that "John Brian" wasn’t in his repertoire, I was saddened that he couldn’t call "Marissa" or "Taylor" by name, and I guess referring to the other guys in the field as "my opponent" has left him unable to say "Rudy" or "Duncan." Seems pretty closed-minded for a guy named "Mitt" who named his son "Tagg" (neither of which he can say, incidentally). But I did appreciate the option to make a contribution and get a real call, or at least a better robo-call (I didn’t make a donation to find out - I’m pretty sure I need my $25 more than Mitt).

Two more big things that impressed me, and a bunch more that I don’t have room to review in depth, below the fold…

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The words are evil and insidious. But at one point we all hear them.

The Web site is down!

It is especially bad when someone else notices this before you do. We�??re often left wondering: How long has our site been like this? Why hasn�??t our host called us? Why does the Internet hate me?

There are some free tools out there that may not be able to prevent your Web site from going down, but at least alert you when it does.

One of my favorite tools is Montastic.com. Signing up is fast and easy, and the interface is super-simple. You can monitor up to 100 sites with a free account. You can get alerts via email when your site goes down, or monitor your sites in an RSS Feed. Leave the Green Page up, and you will always be informed of the status of all your sites. And the site is just funny (with option buttons such as �??save�?� and �??save not�?�).

Slightly more complex, but also data-rich and informative, is Mon.itor.us. Sign up, and you can monitor sites, compare site up-time, get detailed reports, and receive email alerts when your site goes down. Mon.itor.us is not as easy to use at Montastic, but the reporting is more robust. And since both services are free, it certainly doesn�??t hurt to use both to monitor your sites.