Angry in the Great White North

The Liberal Party routinely sends out emails soliciting donations.  All the political parties do it.  But the latest Liberal Party email is a bit deceptive.

The theme of this email is Stephane Dion's carbon tax plan, also known as The Green Shift.

Now there are two websites you need to be aware of.

The carbon tax plan has its own website at http://thegreenshift.ca/default_e.aspx.

The Liberal Party maintains a main party website at https://www.liberal.ca/default_e.aspx.  Within this site are multiple donation pages, including one devoted to donations from people interested in the carbon tax at https://www.liberal.ca/thegreenshift_e.aspx.

Now look at this screen shot of the email:

There are multiple hot spots in the email like the one circled and marked "1".  They all use the word "donate" or "donation", and they all go to https://www.liberal.ca/thegreenshift_e.aspx, which is appropriate and expected.

Now look at the postscript, and in particular, the section circled and marked "2".  What is the reader's expectation?  It seems clear to me that this is an opportunity for the uncertain reader to go to the carbon tax website at http://thegreenshift.ca/default_e.aspx to study the plan and consider the implications.  This is not about making a donation at this point.

But that's not what happens.  Even though the anchor text is "www.thegreenshift.ca", the target URL is https://www.liberal.ca/thegreenshift_e.aspx.  That's the same donation page as before, with no real information about the carbon tax.  It is a form for filling in your credit card information.  It is neither the page named in the anchor text, nor does it fulfill the intent of the link as explained to the reader.

The reader wants to learn more about the carbon tax?  Too bad.  Give the Liberals money.

Just to keep a sense of perspective, this email is not enticing the reader to smuggle $20 million out of Nigeria.  But describing the link in one way and then constructing it to do something else entirely is poor form, for certain.  That the real function (as opposed to the apparent function) of the link is related to the solicitation of funds might even run counter to terms of use for some Internet Service Providers who provide email support.

And it certainly seems dishonest.  Even spammy.

But then the Liberal Party is hard-up for cash.  I suppose having people reading about the carbon tax is a waste of precious time.  It is time that could be spent having these same people providing their credit card information and hitting the "donate" button.

Another example of Green Shiftiness.

Addendum: I neglected to provide details about the email.  It is entitled "Making the Shift" ("Prendre le Tournant vert" in the French portion), and is signed by Douglas Ferguson, President of the Liberal Part of Canada.  In addition to the "make a donation today" and  "www.thegreenshift.ca" anchor text, the link to the donation page appears in two image links, where the image contains text that reads "Make the shift -- DONATE".  The equivalent appears in the French portion.  So there are four links to the donations page.  Three are from anchor links that inform the reader that the link is to a donations page with the intention of making a donation.  The last is a link that tells the reader that he or she will be going to a different site altogether ("www.thegreenshift.ca") and for a different purpose (to learn more about the policy).

A minor detail: Something I forgot to mention.  When you hover over the link in the post script, the one that promises to take you to the Green Shift website but instead takes you to the Liberal Party donation page, a tooltip appears.  It reads "blocked::http://www.thegreenshift.ca/".  That is actually encoded in the email as best as I can tell.  I don't know what this means or why the authors of the email put that into the HTML.