California gubernatorial candidate Bill Jones is back online after his Web-hosting service shut down his campaign Internet site in protest over a mass e-mail that some outraged recipients compared to spam. The campaign to elect Jones, California's secretary of state, involved . . .

California gubernatorial candidate Bill Jones is back online after his Web-hosting service shut down his campaign Internet site in protest over a mass e-mail that some outraged recipients compared to spam. The campaign to elect Jones, California's secretary of state, involved sending hundreds of thousands of unsolicited e-mails to in- and out-of-state residents last week through a third-party marketer, resulting in a forced closure of the Web site by its Internet service provider on Friday morning. The site was down until Saturday, when Jones' committee hired an alternate company to restore its Internet connection just days before the state's Republican primary on Tuesday.

"We hired a vendor to e-mail Californians who had expressed an interest in politics," said Darrel Ng, deputy press secretary for Bill Jones. "For the people who received it outside of California we do apologize for it--of course this is not our intent because they can't vote in our election anyways."

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