You might be receiving political texts even if you’ve never made a political donation.
You might be receiving political texts even if you’ve never made a political donation.
“Its James Talarico. Can you please please please please pretty pretty please rush in even just $1?”
“Who’s working to elect James Talarico? Marxists.”
“Wow! Wow! Wow! Mark Kelly just made a HUGE announcement!”
“We asked Ben Verlander, MLB analyst and former Tigers prospect, to record a quick video about the election this Tuesday, November 3rd.”
“See which of your friends or family members have voted in the past and remind them to vote this year.”
If any of these messages sound familiar, it’s likely because they’re part of the massive stream of text messages flooding your phone leading up to the US midterm elections on Tuesday. The scale of the issue is not entirely clear, but call-blocking company Robokiller found that 15 billion political texts were sent in 2022, thanks in part to a Supreme Court decision the year prior that made it easier to send some mass calls and texts without consent. Alex Quilici, CEO of spam protection service YouMail, has an even higher estimate of 25 billion to 30 billion political texts this year, but caveats it’s an informal approximation. The volume is about the same to 10 percent higher than in 2024, he says.
There’s some good news and some bad news about these messages, says PIRG consumer watchdog director Teresa Murray. “The bad news is that political calls and political texts are exempt from the do-not-call-list rules,” Murray says. “The good news is that the election is next Tuesday, and hopefully within a few days after that, we’ll know what the results are and there won’t be any need to have any texts, or calls, or emails anymore after that.”
There are still some things consumers can try to stem the flow of these messages blowing up their phones — but it likely won’t significantly reduce it before Tuesday.
“In between all of the ‘legitimate’ political texts … there are going to be some scams in there”
The simplest thing you can do is send “stop” or block and report the messages as spam, which will notify your service provider of a likely spam number. That probably won’t result in any immediate change, Murray says, but if enough people report the same number in a certain period of time, the provider might begin to block it or label it as spam. You can also file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission or your state attorney general if you believe a number is using an autodialer without your consent — something that even the people behind political texts are not supposed to do. Whatever you do, Murray says, do not click any links you receive from numbers you don’t know.
“In between all of the ‘legitimate’ political texts that are going out to support this candidate, or vote against that candidate, or vote for this issue, or whatever, there are going to be some scams in there,” Murray says. “If you want to donate money at this point, I would recommend going directly to the website for that political candidate, or for that PAC, and donating it that way.”
How did all of these campaigns get your number in the first place? If you’ve donated to a political candidate or issue group, that might seem obvious. But campaigns are also likely getting your information — including details about whether you might be likely to contribute to or vote for their candidate or issue — through data brokers that have nothing to do with politics. Data brokers collect and sell information from both public and private sources, such as public voter rolls, your online behavior observed by advertising web trackers, and loyalty programs. By collating all of this information, campaigns can try to infer your behavior, though they also might end up with outdated info, like old addresses that lead you to getting texts about a state you no longer live in (or even erroneous info that invites them for states you never lived in).
“As a consumer protection advocate, it’s so frustrating to have to say, ‘What can each individual person do?’”
“Errors in the processing of this information and the identification of individuals are very prevalent,” says Sara Geoghegan, consumer privacy program director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “Sometimes multiple people use the same device. Sometimes people have similar names. Sometimes people move. And this is such an unregulated ecosystem that there aren’t really rules in place to make sure that this is being effective and accurate, let alone free from bias, discrimination, and verified for privacy impact before processing this information.
“As a consumer protection advocate, it’s so frustrating to have to say, ‘What can each individual person do, and how many numbers do they need to block, and what are the toggle and privacy settings that they should toggle on?’” Geoghegan says. Meanwhile, “the companies that are trading in our most sensitive information are the ones who should stop harmful surveillance and the use of harmful technologies to have us better engage civically with our society, and not the other way around,” she says.
“I’ve spoken to people, someone last week who said, ‘Why would I even donate again when I get put on all these lists?’”
Geoghegan worries that the harm of being bombarded with unwanted political texts isn’t just that people get annoyed, but that they stop engaging civically as a result. “Having this surveillance apparatus that invades people’s privacy and really annoys them actually pushes people away from this,” she says. “I’ve spoken to people, someone last week who said, ‘Why would I even donate again when I get put on all these lists?’”
Unfortunately, you might get on some political text lists whether you engage in the civic process or not because of data brokers. Murray says the best long-term solution to minimize these spam messages is to limit how frequently you give out your phone number in general, like in an online shopping portal. If you need to give a number, you might consider using a VoIP number like a free Google Voice number, so at least you can silo those messages into another app you don’t need to frequently check or get notifications from.
Murray says she rarely gives out her personal number and limits where she gives out her Google Voice number, too. But even she has seen an uptick in political texts over the past couple of weeks. That’s likely in part because some groups may try to dial numbers in order in a certain area code, or her number could still be floating around on lists from long ago. “You can’t really do anything about the people or the businesses or the political entities that you have already shared your number with in the past,” Murray says. “But I would encourage people to just draw a line in the sand.”
Murray and Geoghegan encourage consumers to take the actions available to them to help limit the unwanted texts they receive, but they say the real solutions to the broader issue will likely come from Congress or regulators. Geoghegan says greater enforcement of existing laws could limit robocalls and texts, and Murray says concerned voters could contact their representatives about putting more pressure on the FCC to address the problems.
“Don’t get just frustrated with what you can’t change in four days, but you may be able to make a difference for the future,” Murray says. “By all means, reply to a text and say, ‘Stop.’ … But just don’t make it your life’s quest because it’s probably a fool’s errand.”
