Social Media

Ron Paulestinians Hack Rick Perry’s Website

Apparently some Ron Paul fans hacked the site of Rick Perry and thought they’d pull a little trick on him..

Here’s some video I shot of it.

Apologies for the poor quality, but I don’t know how long it’ll be up. It shows the character of his supporters – this is exactly the kind of mentality that wins straw polls but doesn’t win elections.

Sorry Ron Paul, you can hack straw polls and websites, but you can’t hack elections.

***UPDATE***

As it turns out, Rick Perry’s official site is not www.RickPerry.com, but www.RickPerry.org. This means they’ve been sitting on this address for a while, and we’ve only caught up now. It also means the Perry campaign did a poor job of covering all its bases in the social media sphere.

Investigative bloggerette Prudence Paine uncovered some facts about the site to illuminate just how this happened:

The owner of the RickPerry.com domain has chosen to keep his identity and contact information private, but he has owned the domain since May 5, 1998.

Why May of 1998? Perhaps because that’s when Perry decided to move up the political ranks into the bigger leagues. After serving two terms as Texas Agriculture Commissioner, he opted to run that year for Lieutenant Governor. Not many people would want to cybersquat on an Ag Commish’s domain name, but a Lt. Gov of one of the largest states in the Union just might want to buy his domain name for a pretty penny if he continues to rise.

Apparently, Perry is one stubborn guy and isn’t going to negotiate with domain name squatters. The domain is currently for sale at Sedo.com for $34,950. According to Sedo, a domain resale website, the RickPerry.com domain sale page has been viewed 88 times in the past 31 days, and over the lifetime of the sale, 13 offers have been made. (Sedo also states that the RickPerry.com site itself has received only 5,883 views in the last 31 days; however, those third party web traffic estimates are notoriously unreliable. It is hard to say how accurate that data would be.)

I’m unaware how long the RickPerry.com domain name has resolved to RonPaul2012.com, but with the flurry of tweets today about the redirection of the name, it’s possible that it just occurred on Sunday. The RickPerry.com domain registration was altered on December 4. A key part of the registration information is technical data about where the domain is hosted. It’s how your web browser finds out where to go to get to the site you type in. Perhaps it is a Ron Paul fan that owns the domain, or perhaps he has come to some mutually beneficial agreement with the Paul people or one of Paul’s deep-pocket supporters to rent the domain’s internet redirection to the main Paul campaign site.

Not all cybersquatting is illegal or cause to have the ownership revoked. Tucker Carlson, right-wing pundit and owner of the DailyCaller, has famously usurped KeithOlbermann.com and has all traffic to that domain go to the DailyCaller.com. However, in order not to be an out-and-out cybersquatter, Carlson does have the Olbermann domain name go to a search results page of Daily Caller stories referencing the loony left-wing broadcaster. (It shows how Olby has lost relevancy when the most recent result found on the DailyCaller is a story from October 4.)

The RickPerry.com owner is betting that Perry will not lose his relevancy any time soon. He may very well believe Perry could be our next two-term President, as he has paid for the ownership rights to it through May 4, 2021. If Perry continues to refuse to give in and pay the guy’s price, he’ll have a saddle burr riding with him well into the sunset.